Educational institutes are notorious for separating students by class according to social indifference, wealth, and privilege. There are job cliques, a division between workers and coworkers according to status and privilege. I was outside the employee loop because my title was a peer. Oddly Catholic Charities, although an employee, was banned from attending staff meetings because staff discussed client concerns. My role was accommodating client needs, it would have been helpful knowing about clients before becoming involved with their treatment.
Nowadays I don't care, except I want the diving community to accept me. Am I needy?
I don't think you're being needy in wanting to attend staff meetings that discuss client concerns. Getting a heads-up on their needs allows you to accommodate them and to do your job to the best of your ability. It doesn't seem like too much to ask and doesn't make sense as to why you're not included.
"Do you recall being in a clique or wanting to be part of one?"
I didn't want to be in a clique. It wasn't intentional, but I suppose you could call it that because I belonged to certain groups in high school, and we were drawn together because of our same interests.
Growing up, I was involved in a variety of different activities. I was a member of the student council in high school, so there was that group. I was a member of the swim team, the drama club, and the debate team. Some kids, including me, overlapped among these groups. And no, I wasn't cliquey because I had friends completely outside those interests/groups. I ran in the middle of the road because that's where I was most comfortable. There were friends who lived in ritzy neighborhoods in four-column houses with live-in help and friends who lived in low-cost, mass-produced housing developments. I didn't have a preference for one group over another. I was a free agent, moving from group to group depending on the activities I was interested in participating in, in or out of school.
There was a group of girls in high school. They all wore the same expensive brands of shoes, purses, and makeup, etc. It was required to be part of their snooty clique. They were attached at the hip, socialized with no one else, and were so high on themselves that I'm surprised they didn't get nose bleeds from their lofty perches. I had no interest in them. As a whole, they were vain and vapid.
I was a member of the drama department in college, and we socialized together, but we all had other friends who were always welcome to join us. I stopped participating in sports since they didn't have a swim team, and I didn't want to play hockey or lacrosse with six-foot amazons wielding sticks, lol. A couple of sororities approached me, but I didn't join one. Nothing against them, they just weren't for me. I had a few good friends who belonged to sororities, but we hung out together because they weren't completely wrapped up in them.
Exclusivity doesn't interest me. I'm all for including people. I'm not concerned about a person's pedigree, what they have, or where they come from. Their possessions and lineage aren't important to me. Martin Luther King said it best, “Judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.” That quote says it all, and it doesn't just apply to skin color. You get what I mean.
I hope I answered your question.
Bella
