What happens in high school does not stay in high school

Everyone has heard the saying, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”.  While that ideology might work for the city of sin where no one knows each other and no one has any care about how their actions affect others, it does not apply to the world of high school.  High school is a network where everyone knows each other and has known each other for at least twelve years.  No one has secrets and everyone knows every personal detail about your life.  In a network like this, you are held accountable for your actions, which in turn helps to keep you in check.

College is similar to high school because you interact with the same people on a day to day basis except on a bit larger scale.  Since coming to Northeastern, I have become more aware of how regulatory my high school network actually was.  Once you developed a negative reputation it was very difficult to improve your image.  In many cases, this regulatory system was beneficial because people were more careful of their actions when it would have been far easier to disregard the feelings and opinions of others.

In college, you get a fresh start on your reputation however the ramifications of your collegiate actions never leave.  At the start of freshman year, people are the most cautious of how they act around people because they don’t want to isolate potential friends or classmates.  The groundwork that you lay down in your first few weeks can affect your entire college experience, so people are careful to maintain a good reputation.  The regulatory nature of networks helps prevent a world of chaos and the smaller the network, the more regulated it actually is.