As students walk through the hallways of CHS, there are primarily familiar faces surrounding them, an experience that creates the “Chelsea Bubble”. Despite being a near-universal high school experience, chelsea students have adopted the term to describe the culture of the Chelsea School District and the relationships that embody it. The students that spent their whole academic career in the Chelsea School District are within this imaginary bubble, and the new students find themselves peering in from the outside.
“It can affect [school] kind of negatively, because maybe they're just feeling more like an outsider now than what they could have been feeling when they first walked in,” new sophomore Izzy Coon said.
Someone new to the district might find themselves looking through the bubble rather than being in the crowd themselves. A new student peering through the border could see friendships and familiarity developed.
“It probably impacts [longtime students] pretty positively, because they just know more. I guess they're more involved with everything because they have more people, more everything,” Coon said.
Students who have spent their whole life in the district can understand the ins and outs of the community and have a more positive experience knowing where they belong. The bubble can be exclusive, but for the people inside, t’s more homely.
“It feels positive because it's your community you've been around since you were so young, but I feel like it's also kind of negative, because it's kind of excluding people in a way,” sophomore Eleanor Hoodhorst said.
A couple of new peers join each class every year, and with that can come a feeling of being an outsider. Coon took the more ambitious route, finding herself pushing into the iridescent circle that keeps some sheltered.
“I think I'm probably more on the outside of the Chelsea bubble, because I know people and everything, but I'm still kind of working my way into knowing more people, getting more involved in everything,” Coon said.
While Coon describes her personal experience making her way into the bubble, she also considers the perspective of somebody already inside the bubble, and how that may differ from a new student like herself. The term “Chelsea Bubble” is largely identified by perspective.
“People might think that the bubble is just for that specific person. And then people that are in the bubble are like ‘this is great,’” Coon said.
