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I wouldn't say cliques because our nerd groups aren't exclusive...anyone who wants can pretty much join (or at least that's how my nerd groups work)....cliques have that "elite" feeling of "you're not on our level" type attitude...most nerds that I have met aren't like that....they are inclusive....
The GT kids were so competitive with each other that I remember the salutatorian dated the valedictorian just to get his spot. She really distracted him. This was junior year and she was first for that year. By the end of senior year though, he had earned his spot back by like .00001 points. I remember thinking "how can you earn higher than a 4.0 GPA?" There were about 35 kids with Summa honors...it was crazy! I knew all this because not all classes were available in GT...so for example history, the GT kids would take it as an AP course. I knew a lot of them...but they mostly hung out with each other. They would keep quiet unless they were with their own.
Then the regular kids just didn't care. Ironically I hated math back then so I always took regular math. Everything else was AP. Anyways, I remember the kids at the back of the room in Algebra II were always asleep. In geometry they would pass messages on the TI-83 calculator and they thought they were really cool by doing that.
Anyways, what I'm saying is that the GT kids (extreme nerds) were really stuck up and thought they were better than the rest...I guess maybe they were.