In the grand scheme of the 18 years I've been a part of the public education system, I can without a doubt guarantee that my three years in middle school were the absolute worst I ever endured. If I had the magical ability to erase a few years from my memory, you could bet your behind those years would be wiped from my brain faster than the speed of light. Now, as I look back on those years, I wish I had known a few things about the world that would have smoothed out the ride to high school. Here are six nuggets of wisdom I hope can come in handy for the pre-teens of the world, and give a chuckle to those of us who are looking back on those dark days.

1. The awkward phase happens to us all, and eventually you will grow out of it. Braces, acne, bad haircuts your mom forced on you...all are an imperative part of being in middle school. Puberty is a wonderful thing, right? Body odor, weird parts of you doing weird things like they have a mind of their own, zits popping up on parts of your body you never even imagined they could occur...sounds familiar, right? But I promise, everyone goes through it. Middle school sucks for anyone and everyone, but life gets much easier once you escape those three years of hell, I promise.

2. Middle school girls will find anything to fight about. This one hits a little closer to my heart because drama basically engulfed my life the second I hit middle school. I don't know if Starbucks barista's have started putting shots of drama in middle school girls drinks or what, but they feed off of each others drama like life-sucking leeches. I know it is horrible to endure, and this advice will sound unrealistic, but ignore them. It isn't worth it. It isn't worth the time and emotional exhaustion to fight with someone over who you saw them with at the mall last night. All of the meaningless garbage that causes conflicts among pubescent girls will not be important 20 seconds down the line, let alone 20 years. Middle school girls want to sink their angsty little claws into every little piece of information they hear, when in reality, rarely is it ever worth fighting over.

3. Being like everyone else is overrated. The new trend hitting the middle school age group right now is being a "basic bitch." Yoga pants, Uggs, Starbucks, iPhones...the works. Without a pair of $200 boots (which are hideous, mind you), you are condemned to the life of a social outcast. You see the guy you like talking to a girl wearing a Juicy velour sweatsuit (anyone growing up in the '90s knew how hip and happenin' those were), so you convinced yourself that in order for that guy to ever consider talking to you, you had to make yourself exactly like the people you know he already likes. The more I've grown up, the more I've realized boy's don't give the slightest, teeniest crap about any of the things we worry about growing up. They don't care about the zit on the side of our face or the fact that we got glasses and are now the only person in class with them. Middle school boys are simple. It is scary to look at pictures or videos of my old school and see how for three years everyone I went to school with dressed almost identically. They were all in the same clubs and played the same sports and got the same haircuts because nothing was worse than being the kid that wasn't just like everyone else. I don't know about anyone else, but if I liked someone and all of their friends and acquaintances were virtually identical in looks and personality, I'd be pretty creeped out. So embrace your quirks. Be proud of the gap in your teeth. Stop covering up your freckles with layers upon layers of foundation every morning. Stop putting so much effort into preventing yourself from being you.

4. Just because your parents think you're old enough to pick your own hairstyle, be careful before you throw all cares to the wind and chop your hair apart. (See #1) I love love love looking through yearbooks and seeing the permanent evidence of the year you thought you could pull off the Kate Gosselin hairstyle, or the guys convinced they can rock a bowl cut. When I grew up, my mom always cut my hair, and it wasn't until I hit the sixth grade that she even considered allowing me to do something to it other than a simple trim. So of course, like any sheltered kid would do, I abused my new freedom and proceeded to get a haircut that would haunt me for life. Hair will grow back, so as mistakes go, this one is at least reversible (after some awkward years of growing it out). But side bangs being in style doesn't mean you need to get even bigger ones that impede your vision and take three hours to style in the morning. You'll love showing it to your friends after you've gotten it, but once the initial "haircut honeymoon" stage ends, you're stuck with that rats nest on your head until it grows into something you can salvage.

5. If he wreaks of Axe, run. Run far, far away. I don't know if pubescent boys actually enjoy the smell of Axe, or if the commercials brainwashed them into believing girls will actually fall for you for wearing it. But judging by the amount of body spray I inhaled walking through the halls on a daily basis, I can pretty safely say that 90 percent of the purchasers of Axe are in grades six through eight. If a boy drowns his middle school hormonal sorrows by dousing himself in the nose-hair burning, eye-watering, cough-inducing body spray, I beg you to run the other direction.

6. You will not look the same when you end puberty as you do when you start. Puberty causes a beautiful slew of wonderful side effects, especially in the earlier years. People gain weight, people lose weight, they get horrible acne, they get super hairy, they can't stop the mood swings, they can't cover up their...excitement. Whatever it is, it hits you like a truck at first. And if you're anything like I was, you convinced yourself you were doomed to be this awkward forever. Don't forget that you are all in middle school together, and so your journey, though unique, is still strikingly similar to your pimple-covering, brace-faced classmates. You will keep growing. You'll eventually get those braces off. You will one day catch on to the art of shaving your legs. Your body will find its middle ground again. Until then, embrace it. Check your friend's braces for food stuffs after lunch. Don't let that kid leave the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to his shoe. Puberty is rough enough to begin with, so help people out. Middle school is a scary thing to go through on your own.