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Personal Narrative: Surviving Middle School

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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? …show more content…

Every school has its own weird cliques: jocks, rich kids, geeks, general misfits, future drug addicts, current drug addicts, etc. My school had a group of girls who were seemingly linked only by the fact their brothers worked at a local McDonald's. This is all to say, these labels are mostly meaningless. Making new friends requires opening yourself up to people you might not see as potential bestie material on the surface. Despite pressure from others, try never to judge people by their clothes, race, gender, or anything other than how they treat you. Some of your most faithful friends might come from surprising

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