Nostalgia
Having recently entered high school, thinking about the past has been inevitable. In the town I grew up in (and am still growing up in), high school was the big deal. Get there, and you’re set. You’re an adult. It was a staircase.
In the first stage of elementary school, you were the coolest of cool if you were a third grader. There was no reason, you just were. Then you went on to the second stage of elementary school, where you were cool if you did student council, or if you were a fifth grader. But once you were a fifth grader, you spent the whole year pining for sixth grade. Why? Because in fifth grade, you still walked in lines. You still had one teacher. Sixth grade was a whole new world. You were an adult. Well, you were a teenager. Tween. The terms all blurred in your head.
(Come to think of it, fifth grade was my most naive year. My friend had me convinced there was a dragon in the school’s tool shed, I tried to open the doors all year)
Sixth really was all it was said to be. You got a locker, a gym locker, separate classrooms, new folders. You convinced your parents you were ready for an iPod or cell phone (but didn’t text message). Seventh grade was the forgotten year (though my favorite by far), and then you entered eighth grade. The clock ticked throughout the whole year, ticking time away. Soon - very soon - you would be in high school. You’d be a freshman. You’d choose your own classes. You couldn’t wait. And so the year droned on, and you would have done anything for it to end.
End it did. You left the middle school happily, swearing never to visit again, and entered high school. Where you were the baby, the freshman, and not really respected by anyone. You got to the top of the staircase, only to find that you were stuck in mid air, attempting to float to the next staircase just out of your reach.
I still can’t see that staircase. It’s blue, maybe. It looks pretty high. It has high and low steps, and I don’t know where it ultimately leads. I see college, a career, real adulthood. Vague, and the top is still cloudy.
In a way, I never left sixth grade. It was the first real change in my life, at leas that I can remember. It was the first time I started blogging (shhh - those entries are long gone), the first time I realized how much I loved to write, the first time I met one of my best friends (who happened to move this year). Sixth grade represented transitions in my life. At the time, when we were writing papers on the elementary school/middle school transition, I BS’d it all. I really didn’t realize how important that year was and still is. Because when I close my eyes and picture school, I see my sixth grade hallway. Not my eighth, seventh, or current. I see my sixth grade hallway, my locker, my friends, my math class. It’d ridiculous.
This blog entry is a total ramble, and I had a completely different point in originally writing it. But that’s okay, I needed to blog. What are you nostalgic about? Is there a time in your life that seems to define your whole life so far (like sixth grade has to me?)
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I miss grade eight. That was the best year of my life. I did well in school. I had amazing friends. My whole class was really one big group of friends - we were kind of exclusive, being extended French and all.
I hate high school. I hate it so much. I hate the idea of school defining the rest of your life. I hate the people at my school. I have friends, of course, but they will never be my beset friends. I just hate the idea of school. I hate that the fact that I do not understand parabolas can impact my application to JOURNALISM SCHOOL. I just really hate it. I feel like there’s something better out there. I can’t wait for it to be over.
I just miss a simpler time when I didn’t have to have a panic attack every day because I’m failing math.
@Clem: I feel the exact same way! Sixth grade *wasn’t* my best year, though, seventh grade definitely was. But I feel like I’m permanently stuck there. Thinking I have power and then realizing I’m still ‘lost’ (really not that dramatic, but still)
I really do hate high school. I thought I’d love it, but it’s all studying and ‘facing facts’ (’Seriously, Cristina, time to get serious’-I DON’T WANT TO). I hate that my understanding parabolas and cellular respiration might impact my acceptance into law school (or whatever I choose to pursue, that’s the current idea, maybe). I HATE core classes.
I miss the times when I could study an hour a week and get As and Bs without effort. Now some of my Bs take effort. D:
My best grades were eighth and twelfth. When I think of lower/middle school, I think of eighth grade, and when I think of high school, I think of senior year. Those two year were the best years by far. I like to forget the other years ever happened
I think the grade I’m always going to look back on is eleventh grade (which is actually the last year of high school here in Montreal, so it’s basically like being in grade twelve in the US). All of my classes were relatively easy that year and I didn’t have to try very hard to get good grades. I was also in all sorts of clubs, and was excited that I would finally be getting out of high school and would be going to college (I really, really hated my highschool with an absolute passion).
I also hate the fact that such useless knowledge and my ability to memorize all of it will be the sole factor of whether or not I am successful in a usually completely unrelated field. I’m finally done with math, but I hate how it affected whether or not I got into a program that has nothing to do with science or algebra, or anything of that sort. All of highschool was a pretty negative experience for me, I’m afraid. Also, here high school lasts five years because we start in grade 7 and end in grade 11. I’m just I was finally able to get out of there - the first year of college is the best! That is definitely something you can look forward to!
@Manda: Haha, I couldn’t stand eighth grade. Killed me.
@Marie: Senior year seems so far away to me right now, like I’ll never reach it. I already hate high school D:
Looking back, all my years at school have seemed to blur together and I don’t really have a fondness for one particular year. Although, this year is by far the most stressful yet because I have so many exams coming up. I’m finding myself wishing away Year 11 so I can get into Sixth Form where half my lessons will be maths (:D) and I’ll hopefully be treated more like an adult because I’m not legally obliged to be there. That’ll be weird.
@Jasmine That sounds really cool, we don’t have any options like that
This year is my most stressful so far too, meh. It’s my own fault though.
Now that they’re over, I can really remember anything past after fifth grade being bad. I remember being unhappy about a lot of things at the time, but all that animosity seems to have faded. I guess high school and middle school SEEM like such a big deal, but they really aren’t.
@Arielle: You’re probably right, but…meh.
@Purple Alligator Haha! I don’t know if it’s nostalgia though. I’ve always said I’d miss seventh grade, and I do. It’s the only year I’d ever go back to. Sixth grade I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t. It just feels like I never left. Weird…
During elementary school, the top of the school was always 6th grade. However, I don’t remember much of my childhood
I know I never got an iPod or cellphone, though!
7th and 8th grade were pretty great. I feel like every grade for me has been better than the one before. Grade 12 is the best so far
*loves high school*
I think the only times I really get nostalgic about now are when I went to Disney World and visiting family in Egypt.