Ryan Tobin:  

gnored us, but they were ultimately faceless automatons in the popularity game. I remember the intense competitiveness of the "smart" clique...driven by teachers that just wanted to look better rather than enrich and prepare students for life (Dusek being highly guilty of this). Some of the AP teachers genuinely cared....like Maras and Basham. Maras was fantastic. Unfortunately, there was still too much measuring of one another via GPA and SAT numbers. I never quite fit in with most of that crowd because I didn't determine my value by which colleges wanted me...and the crowd sometimes didn't like me because I beat them at their own game without a concern to do so. So I ended up with a motley crew...grease monkeys...a few mediocre athletes....a few "smart" kids who didn't play the "smart" game...and just guys that you knew weren't about the rest of the high school game. I could probably still trust those guys today - I know they could trust me.