High/secondary school children playing chess?!

This topic is two questions..... and a bit of information about me and chess.

At my high school (I'm 13) we have a chess club. People go outside it and give odd looks to the people inside.I am one of the people sitting down, playing chess with the other members of the club. I am more popular with the people outside the room and I just ignore them.

It seems that it is 'uncool' to play chess at my school and I have seem to become slightly more 'uncool' ever since I came joint 3rd(or 4th,I can't remember) with 3 other people in the regional finals of my region(in my age obviously) in the UK land chess challenge (after qualifying from the school rounds). This was enough to see me through to the Northern finals (before the grand final) in Manchester. Unfortunately I couldn't make it to Manchester on that day but at least I'd got there!

So,at last,my questions are:

In other high schools,are children who play chess seen as "weird" compared to those who don't?

And,when the adults on chess.com were at high/secondary school, was this the case back then?

Thank you. 

It was like that in my school. I'd imagine it's the same for most.

In my school, we don't usually have people hanging around outside the classroom where chess club is held. Maybe because it's at the far end of the school, maybe because most of us are/were in the top year and big enough to deter chavs from lower years annoying us. Sometimes we play whilst some of the chavs are in detention and the teacher that runs it usually gives them a game. Since none of their friends are around, they accept and actually some of them aren't horrible at the game.

It's sad that it is seen as uncool, but don't let it bother you. Most of the people in the sixth form that know I play chess don't see me as sad, since I'm quite "normal" in most other respects. Hopefully when you're a few years older it might be the same. But yeah, just ignore them. That's the way to go.

when i was in high school, i guess it was less than cool to be on the chess team. however, it wasn't like the chess players were made fun of simply because they played chess.

that being said, while i was tutoring math to high school students after school, many of the students would come in and play chess together. most, if not all the students played at least once or twice while i was there, and it definitely did not seem like they were made fun of. in fact, i would hear the students talk about other students who were really good at chess and that they were afraid to play against them. i even got challenged by a few students to a few games.

also, on an interesting side note, this high school is known around the city as being in a more poor area of town and having more discipline problem students. so one would think that chess in that area would be ridiculed more than in other schools. not so however in my experience.

What is "cool" and "uncool"? Are these even real things?

What is 'cool' is simply based on the whim of the popular. Something becomes 'uncool' only when enough people deem it to be so. Being cool is not a quality of the activity, behavior, or person that is cool, it is a label applied by something external.

People use such labels that can be assigned at their whim, to detract from things they don't understand and/or can't compete in. It's "uncool" to be smart because some un-smart kids don't want to feel bad about not being in the smart group.

If it was truly "uncool" they wouldn't even waste their time putting it down. They would just go about their oh-so-cool lives and live in eternal happiness with their amazing coolness. The mere fact that they feel the need to put down an activity shows that it's important to them. What's important to them is to convince other people that they aren't inferior for not participating.

If you like chess -- or math, or art, or science, or fishing, or dance -- do it! The real shame would be giving up something you enjoy, that's fulfilling to you, just because someone who is jealous of you told you that it's "not cool".

 This.

sorry, I phrased my post wrong. It is only the sort of people who try and act tough just to impress that use the word 'uncool' on the chess players. Come to think of it there are actually quite a lot of people who encourage me with chess. 

I know I sort of made my school look a bit bad but is only really a few people. Chess still is looked at as "different" though in my year.  

Is "different" bad? If you are the very best, you are certainly different from everyone else. If you are the quarterback on the football team, you're the only one who does that -- different for sure.

No matter what you excel at, excellence will always make you different. So tell me, who wouldn't want to be "different"?

In high school, I managed to balance things like good grades and chess with getting in trouble. I found it really wasn't that hard to find time for both.

I'm not suggesting you get in trouble. I think that has to come naturally.

We play chess in our Common Room, and in fact it was introduced by some of the "tough rugby guys"!