I was lucky enough to be in a good high school where me and my like-minded friends constituted a large enough bloc not to be vulnerable. (The band was fully 10% of the entire population, and generally sat together in three or four large tables during each lunch period.)

But I think it also helped that I was a writer, not in that "I hide in my imagination" way (though that, too, mostly to stave off boredom), but because ultimately, I knew there was a world beyond high school. I could keep things in perspective, and know without needing to remind myself that this was just a couple years of my life, that would seem pretty insignificant once I left them behind.