This was my Reflections entry this year. I wrote it at 2 am, so don't judge to harshly! I don't remember writing most of it, so I was kind of surprised to see it on my computer this morning. I wrote this on Day #2 of Project Lunch Room. The world is made of differences—spotlight or back stage wings, glittering or threadbare, snow boots or sunburns. People are made of differences too. Teens, young kids, and even adults fall naturally into different categories and tend to stay far away from clique boundary lines. Before junior high, I had heard all about cliques- in movies, books, and from my friends. Every report of these cliques insisted that crossing the boundary lines was impossible.
When I started seventh grade, I saw these cliques for myself. In our school cafeteria, I saw people lumped together into clusters, easy to make out. Cool tables, geek tables, and skater tables—they didn’t mix. Everyone was familiar with this arrangement. Asking around, I found every one of my friends could describe the placement of each group in the cafeteria. The “seating arrangement” situation is not unique to our school, either. Kids I know from other schools also said it was “natural” and “to be expected” that we sit with a clique during lunch. Last year, these lines seemed blunt and unbreakable to me. There were people I wasn’t supposed to talk to, because they were different. Groups were teased because they were different. I didn’t like the idea, but I didn’t question it. It’s the way things are.
But this year, I started to realize how seriously the groups were taken, and how people can be targeted just because they sit at a certain table at lunch. Separated, the table across the hall is looked down on, and the popular table is always overcrowded. It’s natural to find friends. It’s natural to fall into a routine. But as I started looking around the lunch room, I saw corners and faces I never even knew existed. I noticed cliques according to race and clothing.
I also began to notice phrases such as, “Does he sit with those goofs on the far table?” or, “Who was there from our group?” in my conversations with my friends. No one ignores the cliques. In fact, we embrace them as “natural”. But why can’t I sit on the south side of the lunch room? Who says I can’t talk to a kid that doesn’t look like me?
This year, I decided to begin an experiment. I would sit with every clique in the lunch room, one per day, until the term ended. My hypothesis? Because we’re so set on our arrangement, people would be confused or angry by the change. They wouldn’t like it. I remembered a time in the seventh grade I tried to sit at a new table, only to be frowned at and told the seat “was being reserved for someone that isn’t you.” Suddenly, I wasn’t looking forward to lunch anymore.
Our school is never together. Not as a group, not really. We always want to separate ourselves and hide from the people that we don’t understand, even all squished into a lunch room.
On day one of the experiment, I sat down at a table I had never sat at before, with people whose names I didn’t know. My lunch tray was shaking and my smile probably twitched. I was waiting for a frown. But I received a shock. I stood out like yellow in red in that crowd, but the kids at the table smiled at me. They said hello when I introduced myself and talked to me through the lunch period.
The second day, at table two, people seemed happy to see me. I didn’t receive any angry glares or scoffs. The kids welcomed the change, even if it was something that had never happened before. It felt like trying to break through a glass window, which turned out to be open the entire time.
The term isn’t over yet, and the experiment still has a long way to go. But already, I’ve learned something about my peers that has impressed me more than anything else. We’re all different, and we automatically cower away from anything new or out of the ordinary. But while taking the initiative to stir things up comes as a shock, the boundaries aren’t as unbreakable as the world tells us they are. People can and will be accepting to changes that bring us together. Already, I have learned more about my school than I ever knew before, and I am amazed at the kind of people that have been around me all this time.
We’ll never know what we can accomplish together until we are together. That hasn’t happened yet, but I think it could, if we took the time to break through the walls. It’s not as hard as you might think. Together, we can join and change the way people see each other and themselves.
Once- I can't remember whether I posted about it or not- I had sat next to Brooklynn at a table, where everyone looked at us and promptly stood up to leave. I told her, "After a month, stuff like this can really teach you a lesson."
