Personal Narrative: Quest Middle School

People change. Three years with the same 60 kids has taught me this. But people change all the time. Instead of saying people change, I should say people drift apart. Sometimes what previously held you and your circle of friends together disintegrates slowly. Conversation dies and interaction is avoided. As a person who experienced this firsthand, I'm unsure how I should feel about this. Back in 5th grade, I was really close to one of my fellow classmates. For the sake of, well, our dead friendship, let’s call her Anna. It was a circle of 5 in fifth grade. We experienced silly stapler wars together and ranted about our ever changing substitute teachers together. Anna and I remained close in 6th grade. Our circle of friends stayed intact although a few of us were in another class. We shared secrets, gossiped about certain people we disliked and fangirled over celebrities. Then, like in every friendship, a fight broke out, not just between Anna and I, but among our whole friendship circle. Suddenly, everyone has a problem with someone else. The five of us found new people to hang out with. Some of us stayed in pairs but Anna had joined a new circle of friends that did not include the former 5 person friendship group we were in. With only 60 people in your grade, conflicts are resolved easily as you most likely see that person you dislike many times a day. This held true for Anna, 3 other girls and myself. We may have split up, but we regrouped quickly.

On September 1, 2012, I walked into my fifth grade teacher’s classroom for the first time in my life. Mrs.Cullen was standing in the front of the door with open arms ready to welcome her new fifth grade students. As I made my way to my desk and sat down next to Charlie Schutt and Quin Timmerman, I got the feeling that middle school would be a time of talking to some of my best friends and cruising through classes. As the school year progressed, and classroom seats changed, my thought of how Middle school would be changed as well. On the first day Mrs.Cullen explained our schedule, Homework detentions, and demerits. After about fifty questions, she sent us off to our first class, and the first step of our Middle School journey. The fifth grade

This passage reminds me about a pen pal that I used to write to every month in grade five. However, when I was in grade seven, I lost contact with her as I didn't receive any letters back from her for over a year. Even though she stopped replying me since grade seven, I still continue to check my mailbox every day hoping to receive a letter from her one day just like what Liesel did in this passage. Also, for the first few months, I would always be worried about her and wonder what has happened to her. As a result, I had many sleepless

It was nothing like I had seen in the movies. I wondered what people thought of me and what was being said about me. I appreciated every person that made an attempt to welcome me, but seeing that it was such a small school, I knew I would be the topic of people’s conversations for the next few days as more and more people heard about the infamous “new girl.” I considered the thought that the students there had all grown up together and known the same faces all of their lives. That explained why everyone already had their cliques. Apart from impressions and reputations, I wondered what opportunities I was going to encounter here and where they would take me in

These kids were cruel. I was picked on for whatever they could think of. The students were separated into different cliques. It was tough to make friends with someone outside of the clique. My friends consisted mostly of girls from elementary school and a couple of new girls I had met. I only had one real friend, Phoebe, my seventh grade year.

I showed up to school every day with my too-small shoes, my plain dress, and my messy hair. Two girls from my class took my brand-new crayons and broke them in half, telling me I wasn’t their friend. My eyes teared up and I tried my best not to cry. My lips trembled. I cried. My mom didn’t like when I cried, “Crying doesn’t solve any of your problems,” she’d tell me. I never really agreed with her. Sometimes forgetting your problems works.

Elementary and middle school was a very interesting experience for me. The school I attended from kindergarten to 8th grade was a diverse school. I had a lot of ups and downs while going there. Overall being there allowed me to grow as a person and introduced me to different things. It also help me achieve high in academics.

Growing up is very difficult. It takes time and responsibility that I thought I had. This summer I quickly realized that becoming an adult is not as easy as a person may think. I had to travel to Oxford for a day by myself, and I learned several lessons such as: always pay attention while driving, make sure to park in appropriate places, and be very cautious while driving in the rain.

Throughout my time at school, English has been one of my favorite subjects. I was enrolled in an international, English speaking, school throughout elementary and middle school, and so I was lucky enough to have fantastic teachers who managed to make class fun and inspiring. In middle school we worked extensively with classical English literature, reading books like Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, A Catcher in the Rye and Romeo and Juliet. I still enjoy reading classical literature occasionaly, but unfortunately I no longer have as much time to read as I did when I was younger.

At the beginning of 2016, I didn't think I’d be coming out so soon. My AP Language Arts teacher assigned a performance piece that quickly crept up on me. We were told to stand in front of the class and share a piece of our identity; it was nothing like any other assignment I had done before.

In the beginning of 2010 everything came to a stop in our lives it seemed. I was 15 years old when it happened. Apparently there wasn’t any money left to help pay for the house. My sister Christina ended up pregnant, Amber wanted to move out. My parents had to think about Elaine and I. My parents couldn’t save the house, electricity was turned off. They had to foreclose on the house. My parents literally didn’t know where we were going to live. My sisters Christina and Amber arranged for an apartment to share together. But because they did that they were unable to help my parents. This caused major resentment between my parents and my sisters. This alternatively affected me and Elaine. After they moved out we were allowed to stay in the house

Before we went to lunch, I was so furious that I yelled at Mrs. Price, “How can you pretend like everything is okay?” The entire class just stared at me, and Mrs. Price said,”Rachel! We will eat lunch, then accompany the principal in her office!” I knew there was steam coming out of my ears by now, but I didn’t say a word. In the cafeteria, I ate my lunch silently in fear of what I might say.

I was bouncing up and down on my car seat, I was on my way to Imperial Middle school to play my favorite sport… the only problem was I didn’t know how to play the sport. I asked my mom I didn’t want to go but she forced me. And she had already bought me new soccer cleats.

The overall experience that I had for my summer project was good, my 50 pictures that I did take was all random places that I went over the summer. I had a good time taking the pictures and the experience was cool.  If I had to change one thing about this project it would be the time I took the picture, because if I took the pictures earlier in the summer than later on I would have more pictures on my project. Mostly because I started taking pictures the last few weeks of summer, and I had to rush to get as many pictures I can to be done with the project.  But everything else was pretty good and I thought I did a dent job on this

Furthermore, these group of friends hung out so much that they extended their friendship outside of school. They did activities that included shopping with each other, playing sports and activities with each other, or even spending vacations with each other. Another important thing that almost every classmate attended was the parties. Most classmates hosted many bar mitzvahs and I never got the chance to be invited into one. Once I saw that I was not going to have any friends to talk to, to share feelings with, or even to confide secrets with, the devastation was arising within me and the idea of becoming a complete outsider was also kicking in. The advice that I received from my parents was that I needed to stay in my lane. In other words, I had to depend on myself and mind my business. All in all, I had to force myself to just go to school for the great education, excluding the social life. It was a horrible time for me. Although there were some classmates who actually saw what I was facing and tried to help me out by introducing themselves, they never really showed true friendship towards me which made me feel demolished.