I’m assuming a lot of us have stood in the cafeteria line, bubbling with anxiety, and our stomach and confidence levels both feeling empty. Hopefully, I’m not alone in this. But, if I am, let me help you understand what I mean by the “unspoken rules” of high school.
As I write this, I’m thankful that I’m not currently knee-deep in the trenches of my junior year (luckily, school is out and I’m free to relax for a bit).
Junior year was rough. On a typical night, I’d have an APUSH reading, AP Microeconomics graphs to review, and a half-finished rhetorical analysis taunting me. This, coupled with reviewing for the ACT, was exhausting, but at least I didn’t have to worry about where I was allowed to sit during lunch.
While every school teaches certain subjects, they don’t cover the unwritten rules of surviving it all. I have a keen memory of my first full day of freshman year. It was lunchtime, the source of anxiety for many students, but I wasn’t nervous. I was just going to do the same thing as I had in previous years: sit in the cafeteria with my friend group.
But then, as I walked in, I realized no freshman girls were in there. It was just a zoo of sophomores, juniors, and seniors. I wasn’t going to be the first freshman girl to sit in there.
So the anxiety started bubbling, but I found a picnic table outside with my friends. Later, I found out it was an unspoken rule for freshman girls to never sit in the cafeteria. It was weird. But I wasn’t going to be the one to change it.
Another lunch-related rule at my school? Seniors get to cut the grueling lunch line.
The lunch line is excruciating. It can take upwards of 20 minutes on bad days, and don’t even get me started on how long it takes for the line to move on nacho day or fried ravioli day. The seniors, the kings of the upper school, get to cut the line, and no one says anything. I mean, who’s going to be daring enough to call out a senior?
There are also unspoken rules regarding dances. There’s one dance in Atlanta that isn’t affiliated with any particular school, but lots of people from my school, including me, attend. Girls have to ask the guys to go; that’s the dance guidelines. Girls register for the dance and have to find a date. The unspoken rule here is that if the guy you ask says no, then he is not allowed to go with another girl if she asks after. But I’ve seen this rule get broken a few times.
As for prom, only juniors and seniors get to go. But say a senior asks an underclassman girl, that girl will have to wear a short dress. Every junior and senior girl at prom wears long gowns, but if a sophomore girl is asked, she would have to show up in a mini dress. This year, there were at least five sophomores spotted in mini dresses at prom.
I’m happy to say that I can happily indulge in my lunch while sitting in the cafeteria (that doesn’t feel as daunting as it did freshman year). Although a part of me wishes I had defied the unspoken rules on day one when I found out that freshman girls shy away from sitting in the cafeteria, I know an important part of life is knowing when to stay within the mold and when to break the rules that no one dares to mess with.
All in all, I’m glad that I’m now an upperclassman who can sit wherever I want when fall comes around.
