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Transition from Danish primary school to youth education is associated with new habits, including increased use of tobacco, alcohol or other substances. On the background of the interplay between the organization of the school, the practices and the development of particular communities among the students, the aim was to understand the students’ changes of habits. The particular focus was to study how the development of habits relates to social and academic participation with friends in the high school organization. I conducted an ethnographic study in a Danish high school setting, 2004 -2005. During one school year, three contexts were studied (lessons, breaks and parties) through participant observations, qualitative interviews and group discussions. The analysis is based on observations and interviews including a case story about three students. Students’ habits develop socially, and the various and changing school communities are the media in which students’ habits develop. Habits are transformed and developed through participation in the communities, and this social development of habits becomes important for whether a student thrives in high school or not. In the Danish high school, students must be able to manage both festivity and academic skills. The school institutional organization contributes to developing different possibilities for student participation and different forms of communities and habits among the students. The high school organization needs to address the dialectical relationship between the students’ social and academic participation, including how to reduce the significance of alcohol consumption for the development of students’ participation across lessons, breaks and school parties.

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