Dear Rachel: How Do I Improve My Reputation in High School?

Dear Rachel,I'm a freshmen this year and I was always looking forward to high school. When I was in 8th grade I started hanging out with high schoolers from freshmen all the way up to seniors. Well me only being in 8th grade I thought it was cool to hang out with the guys and a lot of them seemed to like me and always tried stuff with me.At the end of my 8th grade year I started making bad choices with these guys and it started giving me a bad reputation with a lot of the upper classmen. I'm now turning things around, because I realized what it was doing to my life and I didn't like it. But people still hold my bad choices against me. How can I turn my reputation around so I can get through the next 4 years?W.Dear W.,No matter what other people think of you right now, the most important thing that's happened here--and that you have going for you--is that you connected with your own values. You realized you needed to make a change and you're doing it. That kind of self-awareness and courage will serve you throughout your life. For real.But we're not talking the rest of your life, are we? We're talking right now. And let's face it, reputation is a tough thing to fix. It's currency in high school; it gets you privileges (or punishments) and it also announces you well in advance of people actually knowing you.

First of all, almost everyone makes mistakes with their rep--even the ones who you think haven't. So it's not like you're some freak. Trust me: we all screw up at some point. It's the nature of the high school beast.

Second, you have to be patient. Have you ever noticed that some celebrities who have been exposed and humiliated for doing bad things have major comebacks? What's their secret? Time. They wait for people to forget. And they also set out to change their behavior. They send a consistent, undeniable message about their intention to live a better life.And that's what you're doing. That's all you can do.

Look at it this way: on the one hand, if there are people out there who judge you before knowing you, I totally get that you'd feel exposed, embarrassed, and put down. On the other hand, seeing (or hearing about) people who judge your book by its cover is a great heads-up that these people aren't worth your time anyway.

I'm thinking that, based on your letter, you're the kind of girl who was hoping to get in with a certain crowd. And I am strongly of the belief that those people are very often not the truest friends you can have. I say this because I was once one of them myself. You may find--nah, you will find--the truest, best friends of your life hanging out on the edges of the it crowd, not in the middle.Good luck!Rachel