Most of my expectations for middle school came from the book series Dork Diaries. I loved those books so much. I wanted to be Nikki Maxwell in middle school. Now I know that those books were not an accurate representation of middle school, but the storyline is still interesting.
Teachers: (Expectation) /side note, expectations can be bad/: My expectations for teachers in middle school is that they would be assigning piles upon piles of homework. They would do book reports on huge books like War and Peace. They would hand out detentions like candy on Halloween. They would assign millions of book reports. I thought I would be up until twelve every night finishing homework.
Teachers: (Reality) Most of my teachers are pretty good about homework and tests. The most homework we ever get I can finish within an hour. Book reports are also really easy and we never read books like War and Peace in class. In fact, I’m pretty sure the next book we’re reading is To Kill a Mockingbird which is a pretty easy read, it’s actually one of my favorite books. I may not always agree with my teachers, but the homework, project, and test load isn’t that bad as opposed to other schools.
Mean Girls: (Expectation) In the Dork Diaries series there was this mean girl named Mackenzie Hollister, if you have never read this book that was written for five year old girls like I did, think Regina George. Mackenzie was so mean to Nikki and constantly did horrible things to her, like film a video of her dancing and write Bug Girl on her locker with lipstick. When I was going into middle school I thought that there would be a mean girl like that.
Mean Girls: (Reality) There are really no mean girls or bullies in my school. I’ve never really been bullied. Sure I’ve felt embarrassed at school or teased once or twice by the boys in my class, but that never really gets to me. All the girls in my class get along great which is a really amazing thing.
Middle School: (Lunches) In elementary school I was on a hot lunch strike, meaning I never get hot lunch. I just thought that the hot lunches were completely disgusting. I believed that the middle school lunches would for some reason be different. I don’t know why I thought that because I would still be going to the same school. I just thought the lunches would be amazing and I could actually get hot lunch and not have to bring a cold lunch every single day.
Lunches: (Reality) As I’ve already said, the lunches are the same and still very unappetizing. I probably will never come off my hot lunch strike!
Relationships: (Expectation) Going into middle school I decided that I would never date until highschool, but I still expected others to date. In all of the middle school books I had read, people had dated. I thought that almost every girl in my class would have a relationship.
Relationships: (Reality) Boy was I wrong about this one. Relationships in my middle school were and still are nonexistent. I know this is very different for other schools, but we were a grade of twenty six kids. The only relationship was in the grade ahead of us and they were all anyone talked about. I’m really glad no one dated in middle school, it means less drama for the rest of the class.
Parties: (Expectation) I thought that there would be a party every weekend. I also thought that these would be boy/girl parties. I thought that there would be school dances were people actually danced. I thought that there would be like a miny prom.
Parties: (Reality) There were almost not parties. Our school never throws middle school dances. I’ve only been to one dance and that was in eighth grade. Everyone still only invites their gender to birthday parties, which is fine. There are no weekend parties and even if there were, I’d probably be too tired from the week of school to go.
As you can see, middle school was not at all what I was expecting it to be, but you know what, overall my middle school experience was pretty okay. A lot of adults say that middle school was the worst years of their lives, but I doubt middle school will be mine. I wouldn’t want to relive middle school by any means, but it wasn’t all bad.
My Secret Memoir 