Personal Narrative: Catholic Middle School

In the fall of 2014, I embarked on the start of my ephemeral high school experience. Reminiscing back onto my first day of school, I can recall the exact moment as if it was yesterday. The adrenaline spewing out of my veins as if I had just consumed a large amount of caffeine, the anxiety boiling in my nerves not knowing who my teachers were or where my classes were. But most of all, I recall the coalescing of my fellow classmates’ personalities and the censure everyone had towards each other. It was in this moment that I had realized that Northwest Christian High School was not a banal Christian environment. In fact, Northwest Christian High School was the antithesis of a banal Christian environment.

To know how lead, first you got to learn how to follow. Knowing that quote help me understand my mentor Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith was my coach at first when I started Middle School at Paul Public Charter School. Mr. Smith had taught me to not put sports over education and to respect others.

I started middle school at Bethany Middle school, I had my two older cousins going to school with me. One is the same grade I am and the other is two years older. It was nice having them but we all hung out with different crowds and sometimes we would not agree on the same things so we would not always get along. My first day of middle school was not as bad as i thought it would have been due to the fact that the Bethany middle school was not big at all. My 6th grade year was tough for me when it came to school work, i was used to the work from Central Elementary school and the Bethany Schools were much more strict and left a lot of homework so it was a big change for me. I remember my English class was the hardest along with science but I

Growing up in Catholic schools all my life I have always been told, “God created this earth now it’s our job to save it and keep it as beautiful as possible”, yet my High School did nothing to keep it beautiful like we were always told. We did not recycle the hundreds of water bottles kids drank at lunch, papers we used everyday in class, old textbooks at the end of the year, the list can go on forever. Instead, all of those items have ended up in landfills, polluting the world. Everyone agreed something needed to be done about the problem, but nothing ever changed. My school, Boylan Catholic High School, even created a Go Green club that would hang up signs saying “Save the Environment” or “Don’t forget the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”.

From my experience, surviving middle school takes a mixture of luck, naive fearlessness, and an aggressive number of colorful plastic binders. I started my first day of fifth grade a jumbled mess of nerves, anxious about making friends and doing well in class, and inexplicably dressed head-to-toe in red, white, and blue swag my mom got when the Summer Olympics were in Atlanta. I mean, my backpack matched my shoelaces, which matched my pants and my shirt. I might have even had a hat. A hat. A precisely matching hat. That I wore all day. Needless to say, I was not a particularly cool child. I studied hard, had a core group of equally nerdy friends, and constantly worried about whether I was doing the right thing or, perhaps more accurately, becoming the right thing. Was I not studying hard enough to get into college? Or maybe studying too hard, missing out on my youth? Would I grow into my teeth one day? Would my skin eventually stop looking like greasy peanut brittle?

Throughout my adolescence, I have attended five different schools. They each had their pros and cons, but ultimately, I left each one except for Christian Brothers High School. For Middle School, I attended Lausanne; however, it became far too expensive. After Lausanne, I went to Germantown High School at the beginning of my Freshman year. This turned out to be one of my worst mistakes which, in turn, became one of my greatest failures.

In Middle School, where we were still growing up as adults, we did not like following the rules. I was in 9th grade. That day the bell rang for our next class and me and my friends did not want to go to our next class right away. We waited outside the room for our next class and chilled and talked. Me and my friends were in class all day and we wanted to let go of some energy. We kept talking and if our teacher came, we would go into the class right away. Our school did not like students to hang out in the hallway because they made too much noise. We did not care, we still chilled outside the class. We talked about new shoes and what we were going to do after school. It was so much fun because I had not seen my friends since 8th grade and it was the

I walked into the loud building so scared and nervous. I couldn't believe today was the day. The day i'm finally in middle school. That day was the day that I could officially call myself a Vista Verde Middle School student. When I walked into the building the bell had rung for us to proceed to class. On my I spotted one of my very good friends, Esmeralda. After I said hi to her I walked to my first period class which is room 403 and my teacher is Ms. Blasnek.

Choices. Regardless if the choice is good or bad, everybody makes them. There are times where the choices people make can alter their lives forever; this was one of those times. It was April 26, 2013, a normal friday for me attending West Middle School in my sixth grade year. At the time, I was the definition of an attention freak; I always wanted the spotlight on me. For a reason still not known to this day, I wanted people to feel bad for me. I thought that by gaining sympathy, I would be able to make friends and be the talk of the school. What I didn’t realize is that not all attention is good; some can be devastating. Unfortunately for me, I was not thinking about the effects of the choice that I was about to make. I couldn’t have possibly

It was a normal school day at Brookhurst Jr. High in 7th Period were my friends and I were talking and waiting for the bell to ring so we could all go home and the school day would be over. Before I left I needed to go to the bike racks to get my skateboard so I could ride it home.

Change scared me. Coming to HMS for the first time as a 7th grader terrified me. As the summer came to an end, I worried about getting around the school, meeting new people, and the change in my sleeping habits and schedule. Thoughts rushed through my head about going to the Middle School for the first time. The first day of seventh grade came quick and I was ready to start a new year. My dad drove me to the front of the school and I exited the car saying good bye. I was unsure where any of my classrooms were and I only recognized a few people in my homeroom. The Middle School was far larger then I remember from the tour that ARIS provided. I wasn’t use to no recess, and the formation of the lunch lines. Going into seventh grade, I was clueless

After three long activity filled years, eighth grade is finally drawing to a close. My middle school years are soon to be over and high school is just around the corner. It will be an exciting time and full of new adventures. When I look back at my middle school years one of the most memorable things has been the F.A.P trips. The Field Activity Program has enabled me to participate in many opportunities I would have not had otherwise. In sixth grade we went to swim with the manatees. It was an amazing trip since we were permitted to get into the water and touch them if they approached us. This was an amazing experience because manatees are a protected species, and this is something you can not go out and do

A couple years later it was almost middle school and I was still getting bullied. It was fifth grade and it seemed like everyone hated me. I was quiet, shy, never started trouble but other kids thought they had to harm me. What I remember the most was once I was thrown in a trash can. I decided to sneak and stay in for recess and I sat there in the dark hallway next to a trashcan drawing. This chubby Latino kid appeared and I didn’t even know who he was and he just picks me up and threw me into the trash can. I remember crying my eyes out. I sat in their because I didn’t want anyone to see me. Him laughing down the hallway was all you could hear. I thought “I must be trash.” Eventually, a teacher found me and pulled me out and gave me a hug.

Middle school was just the beginning for me. When I came into the middle school, I thought I wasn’t going to survive but later on I realized it wasn’t terrible at all. I've made some great memories and the best one’s were here. Fifth grade was the start for me, sixth and seventh grade shaped my personality, and eighth grade made me come into contact with myself.

As a little girl, I was ashamed to be Indian. This was due to all the negative stereotypes surrounding my race. In my childhood, I heard people say Indians were smelly, stingy, and stuck up (alliteration). In fear of being teased and misjudged, I tried to be as “normal” as possible to make everyone forget that I was Indian (pathos). As I grew older, I learned to be proud of who I am, but disregarding stereotypes is still a challenge. I am sure everyone in this room has been affected by racial stereotypes before and believe me, I know what you are going through (ethos). You may think that only bigoted and prejudiced people used stereotypes, however, recent studies have shown that everyone categorizes people on a daily basis without even realizing it. Most people think stereotypes are just jokes, yet research proves that stereotypes have serious negative effects. People should stop stereotyping because stereotypes cause “stereotype threats”, create social division, and lead to racism (parallelism).