Auntie SparkNotes: Drinking the High School Haterade

Dear Auntie,
This question is going to come off as really strange, but I feel like having it answered might be just what I need. I'm a senior in high school, and I've recently begun having strange feelings about my classmates.

I used to fit in fine with them, but recently I'm beginning to realize that many of them are wildly immature, obsessed with image, easily swayed by peer pressure, backstabbers, all the stereotypical bad teenage behaviors, etc. I normally wasn't bothered by these things, but as I have been maturing I'm feeling as if they are all just idiotic and I feel like I don't fit in with them anymore. I feel like I better understand life and none of them do, and I feel so far removed from them that I'm beginning to have a lot of anger and dislike towards them. I just don't understand the rude boys that think they're the coolest thing in the world, and the girls that don't have anything nice to say about anyone. I'm sick of the people who compromise who they are as a person simply to fit everyone else's definition of cool. So I basically have two questions about it all. Why do these people act like this, and why am I not like them? I'm tired of having these feelings, because I'm feeling like I was honestly born to not like high school kids. I want to be able to deal with this without going completely nuts. Please help!

Oh, Sparkler. There's nothing wrong with you! Because really, haven't you realized that we're all born to dislike high school kids? That's how it's supposed to be! Even Auntie SparkNotes—who loves you guys! so much! with every last fiber of her shriveled little inter-heart!—will not deny that high school kids can nevertheless be awesomely, eminently dislikeable, for all the reasons you listed (plus a whole lot more that you didn't, at least five of which are directly related to the eardrum-shattering shrieks you emit when we're sitting in a movie theater and a preview for the next "Twilight" movie comes on.).

All of which is to say that frankly, I'd be a lot more worried if you'd rounded the home stretch on your senior year without having had it up to here with the backstabbing, B.S., and overblown drama of your less-developed peers.

The good news? All that ridiculous posturing and peer-pressuring vanishes in the Land of Emotional Maturity—which, gratefully, is a place in which almost every human being eventually ends up. And by the time you graduate, many if not most of your classmates will be right there with you, peering curiously at the handful of maturity-retarded buffoons in your midst, and wondering just what the hell is wrong with them. (And in fact, I doubt you're alone in your feelings even now; if you look toward the fringes of your high school's social scene, you'll probably find a whole contingent of similarly checked-out kids who are just as over the whole thing as you are. Perhaps you can even make friends with them!)

Of course, this doesn't make it any less aggravating to watch while your one-time social cohorts snipe and snap and undermine each other over silly insecurities—which, for the record, is the source of roughly 99% of any and all dumb high school drama, and which is also why it can reach critical mass during senior year. People are feeling vulnerable, competitive, and freaked out about their futures—and, like many vulnerable, competitive and freaked-out people, they deal with it by acting like jackasses.

But with only a few months left in the school year and the laws of puberty on your side, you won't have to put up with it for long. And in the meantime, you've already figured out the best way to deal with your feelings of disgust: just step back, disengage, and do your best to appreciate the remainder of high school for the fascinating study in human anthropology that it is.

Have you had it with silly high school shenanigans, or do you thrive on the drama? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.