Okay I'll brush you up with some straight facts:
1. Most of the conversational problems have to do with (a) Lack of confidence (b) Lack of naturalism in behavior (e.g: you're trying to be nice guy when in actuality you're a guy that cares about himself just as much as the chick next to him) which is also the result of lack of confidence sometimes.
2. In a social circle, once your image has been formed negatively, it is really difficult to make it good again. That being said you can make it fine, but making it good is a very difficult task.
Okay now, Addressing point 1:
There is this conversational tension that 60 years of challenge (dating coach) talks about. A confident man enjoys that tension rather than feeling it's his responsibility to break that tension and make the conversation flow again. But for that, you must be confident first, so that the chick around you feels the urge to take the conversation forward.
Confidence means inner confidence here. Not your body language, not your voice tone, not your hair (all these for now), but your happiness with being who you are. Once that starts to flow in, once you feel you don't really have to impress others by trying too hard and that you can do it just by being yourself (which you can), you'll feel much more comfortable while striking conversation with people. Just imagine what it is when you're talking to your mom or your cousin or your buddy.. do you mind the awkward silence? Do you mind the absence of a topic to talk about? NO! Yet you maintain a good relationship with them and that's because you're being yourself. So Target 1: Gain self-confidence. However you can (sources are many, ebooks, tapes, articles etc.).
Over to point 2:
Once your image has been formed in people's minds, it's easy to destroy it, but to rebuild it, you make to make WAY to many efforts which might not even pay off. That's because when you try to make it good again, you're going off the line, trying to seem like a better person, trying to impress others, and even though this kind of a behavior would give you a good social status in a fresh social circle, in the current one, you'll get responses like
Quote:
"Oh look, he's trying to act all nice. He's trying to barge into our group!"
So the trick is to not give a hoot about the people in your current social circle on whom you don't have a very good impression, be yourself, meet people who you're still not very familiar with (there must be quite a few), have your own friends. This will simply leave the others who don't like you very much right now, wondering.
Quote:
"What's with him? He seems all happy with himself now.. he must have changed. Hmm..."
The trick is not to go and tell or show to them that you've changed, but FIRST to let THEM find out on their own. I'm sure there would be people who are a little lower than you in terms of social status. Talk to them for now, observe how you're free around them, and try to behave similarly with others as well. Once it's evident that you've changed, you can use all the social-tricks in your book to higher your status further.
Since this is almost the end of your highschool years, you'd like to strengthen your inner game so that when you reach the higher platform (i.e College), you can invest your time in "how to become a better PUA" rather than how to become a PUA.
Good Luck
