Rosalind Wiseman Quotes

In junior high, I really wanted to be popular. Suddenly there were parties with boys, and I wanted to be part of that. There was a group of girls, and I wanted to be friends with them.

I started off dancing and playing sports, and I joined the drama stuff, the theatre stuff in middle school because my friends were involved, and it was kind of the cool thing to do.

I really never thought about the way I looked until boys came into the picture.

What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers.

In high school, I threw a party to get a guy's attention. I wanted him to think I was cool, so I let him and his friends DJ and basically take over the house.

When I was young, running with a gang was a cool thing to do; that's how you get popular; that's how you get the girls.

Once I turned 13, I was the guy magnet.

When I entered high school I was an A-student, but not for long. I wanted the fancy clothes. I wanted to hang out with the guys. I went from being an A-student to a B-student to a C-student, but I didn't care. I was getting the high fives and the low fives and the pats on the back. I was cool.

I'm afraid to say I was Mr. Popular at school. I went out with all the girls in my year - I quite liked girls back then - and even dated ones in the year above.

In secondary school, I became aware of the idea of being cool, and that was a bit of a shell shock.

I've not got a girlfriend at the moment. Somebody said, 'Do you worry girls are just giving you attention because of who you are?' I was like, 'I'm 17, it's wonderful.'

I don't know if I was popular in high school. My school was actually not really clique-y, which was nice. I went to a very artsy school, so everyone was kind of friends with each other. I was trying to be popular more, like, in junior high and elementary school and dealt with all that backstabbing and drama.

Don't give in to all the cliques and popularity. It means nothing. I know super popular guys, and guess what? They're just normal people, too.

When I was growing up, it was the guys who were hardest at school who got the prettiest girls. It's a status thing.

I was very average in the social label scale going through school. I was neither the coolest person in school, nor did I suffer the slings and arrows of being made fun of to such a degree that I couldn't get through the day.

I've never been one of the cool people at school, but then again, I don't get the people who are cool. It's not that I don't like them, it's just that they don't interest me.

Class clowns are never allowed to date anybody decent, but you don't get beaten up, you're invited to parties, and everybody likes you.

All this fashion stuff - who's cool now - is just a bigger version of the cool kids versus the nerds.

'True School' is one great big reminder. It's a reminder to everybody in that middle school bracket that was in school when playing hard to get was out.

I don't want to stay underground for just the cool people.

People just don't realize how much peer pressure, the desire for peer acclamation, influences them.

What's funny is that the idea of popularity - even the use of the word 'popular' - is something that had been mostly absent from my life since junior high. In fact, the hallmark of life after junior high seemed to be the shedding of popularity as a central concern.

My first three years of high school, I wasn't that cool.

I think if I was 5-foot-3, I would have been really popular and dated a lot more in high school. I didn't develop like the pretty girl.

I just felt being part of my peer group so strongly. I was immersed in teen culture, but not taken in by it.