Today I am going to write something different from what I usually do these days. Often, I take a prompt that I am given by Calm's calendar and answer it. It's a good way to get started and let the writing flow but doing the same thing everyday gets boring and as Tim Ferriss said, "the opposite of happiness is not sadness, it's boredom." Anyway, here I will try to describe the kind of social groups we find in my classroom. Since our classes split into girls' and boys' sections from middle school, I unfortunately don't have much idea about how it might be in a co-ed situation and every classroom is indeed unique. Nevertheless, this is the story of how I feel my classroom seems to be divided.

Let's start with that guy who always talks. Talks a lot. Any conversation anywhere, and they need to be there (and they usually will be). As luck would have it, I was placed with that guy in my first few months of this academic year and the seating layout remained that way most of the time, save for some days where I moved elsewhere for one or the other reason. At first I found it refreshing: after all, we had just been through multiple school closures and talking so much felt odd but good in a way. Especially since I had almost no contact with him during the pandemic closures. But as it turned out, this wasn't sustainable. After a while it got very distracting. For sometime, I didn't do anything because I didn't want to say it to his face but then I realised I had to do something. So finally I decided to start moving around the class like a nomad in the last few weeks leading up to the summer holidays.

Then there's the group in the class that loves having fun when the teacher's gone. I am a part of that group and, thanks to the low amount of people in our class, we co-ordinate it well enough that no teacher or official has caught us in action. Yet. And we hope to retain that reputation. Somehow we have some of the best-academically-doing people in this group and so yeah, I think it is an ideal balance.

There's also the silent group, the people who seem to be in their own world of sorts. These enjoy their own company but when the time comes, they can sometimes surprise you. There are all kinds of people in this group though: there are those who are hard-working and do well in academics and there's also those who aren't very good in academics. I am not undermining them: having read Quiet I know that these people are as good as anyone else, if not better.

Then there's the people in this 'middle group' who aren't that quiet but also aren't loud either. They work their way through and get involved in the class whenever they can. As with the silent group, this group also has people across the academic spectrum.

There's also the second 'fun-having' group but this group is more on the fun side. These are the people who play mobile games on a regular basis and make offensive jokes (though I believe that no offense should be taken for jokes, sometimes it just feels a bit too much). They are, I would say, what I was 2 years ago (when we were about to leave middle school). Anyway, one of our best academically performing guy comes from here so there's that.

There are also these people who are close to teachers, some for being too good (not really too good academically but close as in talking to the teachers often) and some for being too bad (there are always those).

As I said earlier, I was basically a nomad in the last few weeks wandering here and there. They say the best way to learn is to travel and while I've always agreed with that statement, this only helped me cement my stance. So I tried to sit with as many groups as I could think of at that time and thanked myself for having enough reputation to sit anywhere and make conversation with the people there. In the last week, I asked the quiet-but-has-good-reputation-with-teachers guy to come and sit with us in the "fun having" group when the school re-opens after the holidays. I remember that conversation rather vividly and I still think about it sometimes:

The quiet-but-has-good-reputation-with-teachers guy: So you'll sit here after the holidays too?

Me: Umm I am not sure about that. Come to my group otherwise, you are welcome there too. I think it'd be refreshing for both of us.

The quiet-but-has-good-reputation-with-teachers guy: You sure I'm welcome? [The talkative kid] doesn't seem to like me very much.

Me: Oh.. I see. Come by though, we'll work something out I suppose.

Our class has a under-20 class strength and even here we have these strong divisions where one of my classmates feels like he can't approach the group on the other side of the room! It was a revelation to me and I hope that after the holidays I can look into it more deeply. Sociology is indeed a very interesting field after all.