Middle school is often regarded as the worst years of one’s life. However, I beg to differ from that all too common conclusion. Middle school, for me, was a great time. Sure, I experienced the cliched difficulties of puberty, boys, and friend drama, but it was also the best time for me to relax and enjoy my social life. These are some of the reasons I think middle school years are the best school years ever encountered.
1. Make new friends
Middle school is a time when you get to meet other kids besides the ones you went to elementary school with. Expanding your social circle in middle school actually helps you out in the future because once you get to high school, life is all about meeting and working with new people. So take this time to make new friends. This will definitely prepare you for college.
2. Gain independence
This will be the time in your life when your parents will be completely overbearing because this is the time when you’re going to start thinking for yourself. Take this time to gain independence, but at the same time, keep your parents at an appropriate distance because there will be times when you still need them around…like to drive you to school.
3. Fend for yourself
High school and college are never going to be easy if you can’t fend for yourself, and middle school is a great place to start. Instead of having your parents email your teachers about your grades, you should do it. This will help prepare you for high school and especially college when you need to contact your professors. Emailing teachers yourself will show your teachers that you can speak for yourself, and it makes communication a whole lot easier between you and your teachers. Your parents will never fully know what is going on in your classes, so take the initiative to talk to your teachers by yourself.
4. Time manage
You’ll start participating in sports outside of school once you get to this point in your school career, and that’s a good thing! With practice, homework, and friends all eating up your calendar, this is a great time to learn how to time manage all of your commitments. Making room for everything now will help you make time for everything in the future, and trust me in college, you’re going to want to have that skill. Remember that friends are always important.
5. You do you
Everyone knows that everyone looks awkward during their middle school years. It’s because this is the time when you’re going to experiment with different fashion statements. Don’t be ashamed of what you look like during this time in your life because everyone looks weird, but that’s what makes it fun. So take the time to look however you want to look and don't care about what anyone else thinks because they look just as silly.
6. Middle school is much too important to be taken seriously
What I mean here is that you can’t let things like grades and homework overcome you. Contrary to what some people might tell you, your grades in middle school don’t count toward anything in the future, except maybe which classes you get to take your freshman year of high school. But who cares? High school is a time to start over with academics while middle school is your time to exceed socially. One of my middle school teachers once put it this way: middle school is 20% academics and 80% social experience.
7. Learn to laugh at yourself
Middle school is going to have a lot of drama attached to it, but it’s part of growing up. There will be times when you’ll feel like the whole world is crashing down on you, but you’ll soon realize that those little things really don’t matter. It’s okay to cry, but it’s more fun to laugh.
Middle school is one of the most dramatic times in one’s life. Getting caught up in the moment and feeding into the drama is the easy part, the hard part is realizing that it’s just temporary. It’s easy for me to say that it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because I’m well past middle school, but for a current middle schooler, this advice doesn’t seem logical. I think it’s good to experience the “hardship” of your teen years to its fullest extent, just as long as you are able to recognize in the future that it all becomes a sincere memory. I won’t say middle school isn’t tough, because it is. Just remember that the best thing you can ever do is to have fun and know that you don’t fail, but you learn.
