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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 969167" data-attributes="member: 99">My personal experience is this:  As odious as the American High School "clique system" is, it is fairly confined to that environment.  Once people enter "the real world", they find themselves exposed to (and are some degree required to get along with) a much wider variety of people in the workplace than they probably hung out with in school.  As just a very brief anecdote about this, let me describe my so called "High School Reunion".As is probably typical, our class officers were chosen for their popularity and social status, not their smarts or value as leaders.  A few years later when it was time for our 5 year class reunion, they did an unimaginably poor job of organizing it.  I didn't go (having heard about it only a couple of days before the event) but rumor has it that approximately 5 people out of our class of 400+ attended.Five more years go by and it is time for our 10 year reunion.  This time, they didn't even make an effort to organize it.  So a few other people just sort of passed the word around among people they were still in touch with and we agreed to meet at a bar one Saturday night.  This time we drew about 25-30 people, which wasn't a big improvement over the first one, but we had a great time anyway.The surprising thing was that despite the fact that this group was from a huge variety of "cliques" we all had fun chatting with each other about our lives since high school.  There were jocks, and geeks (like me), cheerleaders, stoners and every other imaginable stereotype-from-a-John-Hughes-movie that you can think of.  But we got along great and everybody seemed to have a really good time.Take that for what it's worth.On the matter of social adeptness, especially when it comes to the opposite sex, I'll just give a few basic tips that seem so obvious that they hardly bear mention:1)  Don't be afraid to talk to a stranger.  The absolute worst thing that can happen is they'll hate you and never want to see you again and they'll go back to just being another stranger and you will have lost almost nothing.  The upsides can be tremendous however.2)  When you are talking to them, pay attention.  Listen and HEAR what they are saying.  If what they have to say isn't interesting to you, pay attention anyway.  That by itself is valuable information.  Look them in the eye.3)  Try and condense your thoughts into something fairly concise.  Present your thoughts and then shut up and listen to their response.  Use an appropriate level of tact, but I wouldn't try and disguise my views, even if they differ radically from the person to whom I am speaking.  I think what I think and I'm not ashamed of it.Like I said, those are so obvious as to be almost worthless in terms of advice.Have you ever heard the phrase, "Ninety percent of everything is crap."  Well, I guess social interactions are sort of like that in some ways.  Not that most folks don't have interesting things to say (including you) but that most of what they have to say won't be interesting to you (same goes for what you have to say to them).  But there will be a small subset of those people with whom you will click on one or more issues.  They will become friends or lovers or just interesting people with whom you correspond.  The more often you engage in those social interactions, the more often you'll get the "click".</blockquote>

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