It is a universally established rule that middle school years are the Years of Awkwardness. For me, this rule applied extensively. I went to Schindewolf Intermediate School, and because of zoning, half of my elementary school friends were sectioned off to Strack, instead. This left me frightened, because that meant I would have less friends going in to sixth grade than other kids at other elementary schools. I did have a few longtime best friends, but over the course of sixth and seventh grade, we drifted far apart, and the days of our laughter and best-friendship were over. I did make new friends, however. On the first day of sixth grade, Vivian Yim became my first middle-school friend. We bonded over our general dislike of our English teacher, and our silly projects we did for Social Studies. In sixth grade, I also became good friends with Elizabeth Broussard, when we were forced to partner up for math class and discovered that liking math wasn’t the only thing we had in common. There are countless others that I met over the course of those three years at Schindewolf, many whom I am still good friends with today.
I found a nice, accepting place in choir. I also attempted cross country in seventh grade, but eventually stuck to tennis, which I did for both seventh and eighth grade. Many of my friends changed not only in personality over those three years, as I went from being tall in sixth grade to short in seventh with all the growth spurts. I transitioned out of my puppy shirt and Limited Too shirt phase into Aeropostale which, along with Abercrombie and Hollister, was all the rage. I also grew out my bangs, and went through a phase where I had the whole hair-covers-your-eyes look everybody seemed to be getting. In the end of those three years, I came out of the awkward tunnel (thankfully!) and entered the nerdy-awkward spectrum (which is a completely different thing). Done were my days of that pre-teen transition.