Well, in my case, I was lucky enough that by time I hit high school, the other kids had matured just as much as I had, if not more so. They were old enough to realize that bullying, as well as the typical reasons for engaging in conflict, were mostly stupid, and that there were better ways to handle disagreements. That's not to say there never was any fights or bullying, just that there was far less of it. (And IIRC, it was almost always among the freshmen, not the "more experienced" students.) Plus I was no longer suffering from the fights or bullying, because I had matured enough not to earn such treatment with my behavior, and the fact that my set of classmates was now mostly new meant that nobody would be tormenting me merely based on my old reputation.
I will admit that the fact that my high school was a magnet school for academics and performing arts probably had something to do with it as well. Academics are usually too busy with their noses in books to cause grief for others (not to mention that they probably had to suffer grief themselves earlier on for being "different" than everyone else). Performing arts is competitive, but it's usually a fairly healthy competitive... everyone wants to be good, and only one person gets the starring role, but there's still a sort of camraderie of sharing the experiences of what it's like to gather up enough guts to go out and perform. Performing arts students are too busy being creative to make grief for others, and most likely they also got grief in earlier times for being different, albeit in another way than the academics. (The dress and behavior code at my high school was fairly lax, so my classmates were fairly... unusual, to put it mildly.)
But still, I think that at least having the opportunity to try and shed a negative reputation is better than being stuck with it your whole school career.
Peace & Luv, Liz
