You’re about to start at a new school for your 7th grade year. On the first day of school, you’re going to walk in without a Hollister or Aeropostale logo embroidered on your polo shirt, which will make you instantly think you’re not a "cool kid." When you walk into your first class, everyone will be talking to all of their friends from last year. I wish I could tell you that instead of reading the board over and over again while secretly wishing someone would take a chance on the new kid and say hi, that you should go over and say hi to the bubbly blonde girl who seemed to be best friends with everyone.
You’re a couple days into the first week of school and you’re realizing who the "cool kids" are and who the "geeks" are. You have your mind set on becoming one of the cool kids even if it does mean changing who you are to fit in. Don’t. Don’t listen to the labels. Be yourself and stop pretending to be someone you’re not in attempt to get friends. If you pretend to be someone you aren’t, you’ll soon realize that those ‘cool kid’ friends aren’t really your friends...and those "uncool kids" that are actually pretty cool, will no longer want to be your friend because you didn't say a word to them in the first weeks of school. This will then lead to you having to ‘do make-up work in the office’ because when you go to sit down at the lunch tables it’s like you’re sitting in a police interrogation room and everyone else is on the other side of the glass just watching you sit by yourself.
Eventually, you’ll have a couple acquaintances. Those people will then try to convince you that school is dumb and getting good grades are overrated...that it’s no big deal when you make a 50 on a test. “It’s because the teacher sucks and is out to get all of us,” they’ll say. Don’t listen to them. They don’t know that Mrs. White, your English teacher, will make you realize how much you love writing stories, how much you love reading the books and making the story come to life in your head. They don’t know that literature will be one of the biggest parts of your life in years to come.
As the school year ends, you’ll leave thinking this is what the rest of your grade school life will be. Well 7th grade me, you’re wrong. You’ll come back for 8th grade and you’ll meet people who will love you for you. People who you can now go months without speaking to, and then call them like nothing has changed. You know that bubbly blonde you wish you had said hi to the first day of school last year? You guys become best friends, you’ll be up until 4AM watching One Direction videos together every other weekend. You didn’t need to be someone you weren’t. You shouldn’t have listened to the "cool kids" when they called you names. You shouldn’t have let all those words that everyone was saying define who you were.
This goes for anyone who has felt or is currently feeling this way. Don’t let your value decrease based on someone else’s inability to see your worth. When you’re going about life writing your story, don’t let someone else control the pen. Be yourself, and if people don't like you for you, that's their loss.
