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Junior High School

The first "first" day of school I can remember was my first day in junior high school. I was more afraid than years earlier when my dad took me to a Boy Scout meeting to see what I thought, and equally afraid to the time my mom enrolled me in a basketball camp when I knew I was a wretched basketball player.

I knew one person, a nice guy named Michael, but I also knew that I couldn't latch onto him, lest I be seen as a leech and a wimp. No, I had to face it alone.

My solution was to keep my mouth shut. I was socially awkward and felt myself unintelligent, so anything I said or did to draw attention to myself would have been no better than negative publicity. It turns out that things weren't as bad as I thought they'd be. As far as I can recall, the teachers were nice, and no one went out of their way to mock me. Of course, no one went out of their way to talk to me, either, so I suppose I got what I wanted: a neutral day with nothing to speak of in terms of friends or enemies.

My junior high school days, in fact, turned out to be wracked with the mean-spiritedness and low self-esteem so endemic to that age. I remember making mean comments toward others, and having equally mean comments made toward me, all of which were communicated outside the presence of a teacher.

Still, I know these years have redemptive value for today, for I eventually became a junior high school teacher. The fears and failures I felt then afford me an empathy I can draw on with my own students, even if I don't always do so. I was as petrified in seventh grade, and as confused and mean in eighth grade, as my seventh- and eighth-grade students are today. Now I know that when they act toward each other the way they do, there is an underlying reason, that they seek an affirmation of their identities at an age when identity is so clouded. I'm shocked at how well my students handle themselves. Then again, I think many of them are expected to grow up faster than was required of me.

Perhaps because of this, my students may take different lessons from their junior high school days, lessons more in line with the spirit of the times, of an age in which social statuses are built and destroyed as much as-- if not more-- on the digital plane as they are on the physical one. I only hope that with this increased power to encourage or tear down, my students choose the former rather than the latter.

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