In “Academic Achievement and Its Impact on Friend Dynamics” by Jennifer Flashman, she talks about how the friends you make in school can either “encourage and discourage academic achievement”. She looks at data from high schools in the “Add Health saturated sample” and notices that students who have around the same grades tend to hang around with each other and help each other out academically. Jennifer also notices that the “low-achieving” students tend to hang around with other “low-achieving”, but they also react well with changing their friend group. Which leads them into getting better grades.

I found it interesting that she used data to support her statement because it shows that her statement is true. I can really relate to this post because when I first started high school I wasn’t sure which group of kids to hang around with. I had some friends who did amazingly well in school, but also had some that didn’t really care that much about getting good grade. I soon fell into the bad group and was failing classes, wasn’t studying for test, but I got a good kick in the butt when I found out if I failed any more classes I couldn’t participate in my after school activities. I soon turned to my other friend group and managed to get all A’s my last two years of high school.