Last Thursday I had an idea. Oh boy.
A couple of boys came up to my friends at lunch and started teasing them on Thursday. Most of these kids were people my friends had never even spoken to, but they seemed to know just how to pick on them.
How did they know so much about my friends? What right did they have to go around, acting so much better than them? This is where the idea comes in.
I knew exactly why they thought they were better than my friends: My friends sat on the floor.
I've seen from the very first week of seventh grade how the lunch room is divided. Everyone has. There's always been a seating arrangment in place, according to cliques. I wandered a little at the beginning of last year, trying out different tables, but as the seating chart gets more and more official, kids are less and less welcome to changes.
I remember sitting at a table one day only to be told, "Do you mind? That seat's being saved for . . . someone else." It isn't uncommon to hear lunchroom cliques mentioned outside of school, too, when people ask, "I don't know him- does he sit with those weirdos on the table across the hall?" or "Who was there- you know . . . from our group?"
Once I started asking around, I started noticing just what common knowlege the cliques were. Nearly everyone can point out the seperate cliques without thinking, even seventh graders that didn't see them all last year.
Cliques aren't rare. Everyone has one, and they are hardly ever disrupted. People are grouped together by grade, hobbies, GPA, or race. While sometimes a clique can help kid feel more comfortable at school, they are also a way people use to judge others, which leads to bullying and discrimination more often than I thought.
On Friday, I made a map of the lunch room. After sketching out the tables, I looked around and was disturbed at how easily I could pick out one clique from another. In second lunch, I counted 31 in all. I realized while looking around I didn't even recognize half the kids in the lunch room, because I've been spending so much time in my clique.
In science this term, we've been studying chemical reactions. One of the most common questions on our quizes is: "How do you speed up a chemical reaction?" You stirr it.
As if I don't have enough to do, I'm going to stirr up the lunch room. Between this Monday and Winter Break, (when lunch schedules change) I'm going to sit in every clique in the lunch room. These are the rules.
1. Conversation must be made. No matter who I'm sitting with.
2. I will always use the shortest lunch line in order to spend more time with the day's table. (Even if it's mystery meat.)
3. I can take a max. of 1 person with me to the day's table. Taking a clique with me would kind of destroy the purpose.
4. I'm going to blog about the day's table every day. My Scientific Method goes something like this:
Observation: Sitting out of the usual arrangement is unheard of in second lunch.
Purpose: (A question or problem you want to solve) How will people react to someone unlike them (in some instances someone they've never spoken to) sitting with them at lunch?
Hypothosis:(Prediction or edicated guess) People will be upset, confused, and/or rude about the change in the seating chart.
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."
