#16: Welcome to the Jungle: Junior High
You know where you are?
People say that high school is a rough transition. If that system is one that jumps directly from elementary to high school, sure. Otherwise the middle school is the true test. Saved By the Bell was a bunch of fucking liars about how Junior High / High School really was. The first week of Junior High was a living nightmare and we were far, far, FAR from the sanctuary of elementary school. We were like Kunta Kinte removed from our native homeland and placed in the scary new world, never to return.
If you looked at one upperclassman funny, they would give you trouble. Chances are, it was innocent and you would actually be staring in shock at their full grown mustaches or beards. If you had to ride the bus to/from school, make sure you get on the bus EARLY. Otherwise even if they were the only person sitting on that row, no upperclassman would spare room and you would have to stand up the entire way home (the bus driver didn’t care).
Did you get good grades in elementary school? That didn’t mean squat here. I was close to being a straight A darlin’ in my last school and now felt what it was like to be at the bottom of my class, scoring my first D’s and F’s.
Like God…..D.A.R.E. didn’t exist in Junior High, either. The bathrooms absolutely stunk of cigarette smoke and who knows what else. Some of the kids who I remember being filmed for anti-drug commercials started to turn towards smoking and drugs and become the very thing they pledged not to be.
Back in elementary school, everyone was friends and nice to each other for the most part. This wasn’t the case anymore. Kids in my class started to move into their own cliques and people who one time treated you nicely now gave you trouble. The same friends you had in grade school didn’t turn out to be your same friends in Junior High as people started growing apart. My friends all found new people to hang out with and forgot all about me, and there was a period of over a year in Junior High when I had no one to talk to or hang out with until I went on to High School when I made new friends.
But it wasn’t all bad, either. Well…let’s see….we had a pen machine where you put in a quarter and got a pen. Yeah…that was kind of cool. There was an electronic scrolling message board in the cafeteria. And…..that’s it.
Well actually…the best part was discovering girls.
Another 20y/o Virgin Says:
April 11th, 2008 at 2:47 am
Yeah the groups everyone divides themselves into is what tore up my social life going into Junior High. And it was worse in High School. You couldn’t even have a normal conversation with people in higher social groups.
The weirdest thing about all of this is that the moment you hit college, ALL groups and clicks vanish. It was the strangest feeling. I’m going to a college where I see numerous people from my high school, but all of a sudden they are so much more open to me. And one of my friends even who’s never usually good with women or in social situations managed to create a great relationship in college with a girl from a much higher social circle in our same high school.
The social structure after Elementary school until you his college is just destructive in my experience.