Personal Narrative: My Middle School Life

Before the first grade, we moved around a few times before ending up here in Sylvania. As a child, both my parents worked full time jobs and I was always at after school day cares or at my grandparents houses, never really got to spend a lot of time with friends or was able to socialize with many people. So growing up most of my time was spent with my brother and I thought nothing of it. As I grew up I began to realize that I had become stuck in some bad habits. My brother and I weren't asked to help around the house much but when we were we never listened. But to my surprise there were no consequences for our disobedience. At the time I thought I had it good. Around the time I got too middle school I began to realize the problem. I began

The unpacking took a long time we had to pick our rooms and then bring our things in them. I picked the upstairs room, it had a bathroom and a big closet. The room was isolated from the rest of the family and in my old house our rooms were close by each other, so I moved to a room down stairs since it felt weird. It was odd living in a new place, at least at my grandma’s house I had visited it before. It was different having a basement since in Florida if you dug out a basement it would flood with water from the sea. It took awhile but we finally unpacked all our things and it was almost time to start school. We got my sister and I enrolled for school at Horizon Elementary School. The rest of that summer went fast, before I knew it I was going to my first day of school of fourth grade. I started to make new friends and it turned out it wasn’t so bad to move to

Moving away from the place that one calls home is a hard situation, especially for a child at a young age. I lived in Brookhaven, Mississippi, and I was in the eighth grade. I had been in Brookhaven School District majority of my childhood. I had plenty of friends, and I was involved in school clubs. It was two weeks before the beginning of my freshman year when I got the news. My mom called me in her room and explained why I had to transfer schools. My sister has Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, and she felt that it was best that we try a smaller school. I called up my friends to tell them the news, and we decided that these last few nights were going to be the best. We went out to bowl, had sleep overs, and had a special trip to the waterpark. I felt so happy to get that time with them, but moving day came and ruined all of the fun. That morning we packed up the house, said our goodbyes to our neighbors, and drove away. Though as I rode in the car towards a new beginning, I felt like I left behind the whole world behind me.

I was never the type of kid to standout in school especially not in the hallway. I was never too tall, never too short, not too scrawny, but the one thing I like to do is make people laugh. Yet even though that was very fun and all I still leave my legacy behind, which as weird, as this sounds, I was the one kid teachers never took seriously, but for the most part I never got that bad of a grade, in middle school(except when it came to 7th grade language arts class).

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?

Moving happens frequently, about fourteen percent of Americans move each year. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is about 46,778,674 American citizens, that’s each year alone. If it hasn’t happened consider yourself lucky. If you’ve never personally moved, chances are probably know someone who has. The struggles that come along with moving can start off calm and fine but the reality of what is being left behind sets in and just realizing that everything has changed. I’ve moved three times, each time to completely new locations, new places I’ve never seen, and new faces I hadn’t met. The first time I moved it was life-changing. I was moving from the suburbs of Coppell, Texas to Albany, Georgia.

I remember when it was time to go from being a 12 year old 6th grader, to a 12 year old middle schooler with a lot more responsibilities than I was used to having. I had to make sure all my homework was done on time (It took me awhile to get the idea of no late homework hammered into my head), asked for help when I needed it the teacher wasn’t going to help as much as the elementary teachers would do unless I asked, with asking for help was a lot harder than I thought it would be everyone was confused too, after awhile the teacher finally got tired of running around the room jumping from student to student, marched up to the front of the class and wrote on the board of how to do a certain assignment.

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.

I went to three different middle schools. The first middle school I went to was Baldwin Arts and Academics Magnet. This was probably the best middle school out of the three. I had the most and best friends. They were all different, and they loved and understood me. The two things I hated about Baldwin were the stairs and the miles our P.E. Coach would make us run. The teachers were sweet for the most part, and even though I didn't do well because I wasn't accustomed to magnet school, they helped me as much as they could. The transition from public school to magnet school proved too tough for me, so I had to go to another school.

Can you imagine being pulled from the only place you have known and loved, and being placed in completely new surroundings? It is not the easiest transition I can tell you that. I’m talking about moving, more specifically, the moment I found out. I was eight years old at the time. I remember my parents coming in and breaking the news to me. Their reason was we simply could not afford to drive back and forth so much. We lived in Peoria, Oklahoma and had been for roughly 7 years. So for most of my life I had lived here. My Dad worked for Pepsi at the time and also was the Chief fireman for the Peoria Fire Department. My Mom worked at Galena’s high school and because of this my sister and I went to school there. The commute to work & school everyday

In sixth grade it was a whole new ball game. We had a different teacher since the third grade and more students. By this time we were all calling each other cousins and so on and so forth. This teacher was fun and cool. One thing I have to say is that she could wear some heels. Everyday she wore heels. There was not a day that she wore regular shoes. But this one time only, just this once she came in with sneakers because we were going on a field trip and she didn't want to walk in heels all day. But other than that it was back to the

Sweat saturated every crease and contour of my hands as I neared the front of the lunch line. Inch by solemn inch, I crept closer—anxiety overwhelming me. What will they think of me? Will they laugh at me? Before I could muse their possible perceptions, I found myself at the end of the line.

Just the idea that we were moving again after finally getting settled in Keller, was hard on my family, especially since my dad

At the end of middle school, I had this idea that there were lockers in the hallway and you would get 15 min in passing to go to your classes. My sisters told me this was wasn’t true , but I believed it because I had seen it on TV. My sister used to talk about the bridge at school; in my head I imagined it to be small wooden bridges dividing the school into 3rd for each program (M, H, and LASI). My sister also told me about a pool on the 5th floor.

Packing up your life and belongings is a difficult task to do. My family lived in Apple Valley, MN, until the week before my 7th birthday. My parents told my younger brother and I that we were moving to Hastings, MN. I had no idea where that was as a child. I was excited about this new experience. I have always been interested in travelling. When we arrived in Hastings, it was nothing like my old town. I knew nobody, all I knew was that I lived in the middle of the woods. Moving to a different town isn’t just about the new house, it is also about making new friends at a new school, and living a different lifestyle.