sweet valley high

when i was in mrs. balanoff's third grade class, i remember girls frequently squaking over these books. at the root of it, we all wanted desperately to be cool and in high school. we got to high school, lived it up, and thought we were the shit. drama ran rampant, especially at my small baptist school where i attended kindergarten through diploma. people's private lives often ended up on the chopping block, and i lived my uber-cool existence guarding myself against what i did to others. oh the games we played. there were the church kids, the athletes, the minority table (which i tried to sit at as much as they'd allow), the nerds, the mean girls, the "wild" kids, and all the other usual suspects. my favorite was the group of girls that were a year younger than me that got really trashy really fast their junior year. we lovingly referred to them as the "party sluts". i dabbled in several different groups, but the drama was always the same. and at a small school, you knew what everyone was up to (unless you played it cool like i did). it was a strange and akward time in life, but we were carefree and made the most of it. i walked away with great memories, several lessons learned, and a few good friends i can still speak of today.

fast forward, and now the 24 year old version of me works at a manhattan advertising agency where lately i've been noticing the similarities between this stage in life and high school. all 175 of us are stuck with each other. some of us like each other; some of us don't. there are clicks and mean girls, just the same. the drama is a bit more juicy and the freedoms are well, existent. there's no teacher telling me to tuck in my shirt or a report card with a grade on it, but there are people watching your every move and analyzing how you work with others and what you bring to your team. the teams that i work with on my accounts can be likened to a sports team. the department i'm a part of is like my class. people are no less superficial or judgemental, but as adults, sometimes we know better how to mask such things. people are still fickle and silly and irresponsible. it's just that now we make money and buy our own lunch.

it makes me laugh that we push through high school and college to make it where we are now. yet we're back where we started. life is run in circles.