He’s good at sports, so he must be as dumb as a bag of bricks. They’re in band, so they must be geeks. She’s a cheerleader, so she must be a snob. You’re a ginger, so you must have a horrible temper. We’re young, so we must be naïve. Stereotypes are one of the biggest problems in American high schools today. It doesn’t show much here in Freedom, but we all know it’s lurking in the dark corners. Stereotyping people is hypocritical, since you’d fit into at least one of the groups, believe it or not. Not only that, but it’s a complete overgeneralization. Personally, I don’t even know what people think I am, nor do I care. I play sports like a jock, my hair is purple like a scene kid, I was in band for three years, I listen to “screamo” and indie music, I get good grades, and I study like a nerd. Where would I go? Exactly, I would fit into a ton of groups; stereotyping is idiotic. I see one particular stereotype a nauseating amount in the hallways. Come on, we all tell blonde jokes and we all laugh at them. Some of the smartest students in our entire school have blonde hair, but for some reason, people still associate blondes with being stupid. When Albert Einstein was young, he had blonde hair, yet he isn’t the butt of any of our jokes. Do you know what the E=mc 2 formula means? Yeah, I didn’t think you would… unless you took Physics. Do you know what I hate? I hate when people judge someone else before they even get to know them. Don’t ignore the girl in the back of the room that dyed her hair black because she is “emo” and you think she hates the world. Most likely she doesn’t. She probably just likes the color black; get over it. Don’t make fun of her because she isn’t exactly like you and your friends. For the stereotypes I do see, it’s ridiculous. Even though you are joking, the stupid antics are getting old. Leave the people who like to read, the people who wear black, the people who sit alone, and even the school’s gingers alone- get a life, people. I like to think that all people are friends, and that life is about rainbows, happy bunnies, and kindness, but it’s really not. I assume you’ve all seen “Mean Girls.” Well, most schools are a lot like that. They usually have tons of cliques, but not us. We are an open school, I guess you could say (with a few exceptions). People that are in band are friends with people on the football team, and the academic scholars are friends with the cheerleaders. We don’t really group people together, and that’s amazing for kids our age. We need to get rid of the stereotypes all together, though. Maybe it’s because we are such a small school, and everyone pretty much has to know everyone else, or maybe our parents just raised us correctly. One thing is for certain though, most of Freedom has class, and not just because it’s a school.