We Hate Middle School Because We’re Still In it
HOW SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS STAYS WITH US AND HOW TO FIGHT IT
By Anna Aquino
You find yourself fiddling with the hem of your shirt for the thousandth time in a seemingly never-ending 50 minute class period, reminiscing about your elementary school days. Somehow it’s gotten to the point where you miss your fourth grade homeroom and Four Square and woodchip splinters. You think about how all the teachers used to call you “cute,” but now you can’t help but notice that your shirt is both too big and too small at the same time, and how everyone else seems to be growing out of their awkward stages faster than you. You’re micro-aware of every new hair on your body, every weird sound in your voice, every ill-fitting shirt in your closet. It seems you can’t remember the last time your laugh sang how it used to. Or perhaps you feel you laugh too much; every little thing you do is funneled back into your mind, which has happily adopted its new role as a self-doubt machine.
Yes—middle school sucks. And yes, it’s only three or four years of your life. However, that relatively short amount of time is one of the most transformative points in the average person’s life. Using Erikson’s psychosocial stage model in psychological theory, most middle schoolers are in the Identity vs. Confusion Stage, meaning they are confused about who they are. Maybe the child in question was a squeaky-clean, goody-two-shoes elementary school child, but ever since watching Miley Cyrus’ “Can’t Be Tamed” music video, they have a new perspective on what’s “cool”. Or maybe they were a true athlete throughout childhood—a proper Simone Biles or Serena Williams—but now they started watching Twitch and are newly enlightened to the potential happiness esports can bring them. And confusion ensues.
But is this confusion misled? Could it be the inward obsession with self-discovery and self-definition that makes middle school not only unpleasant, but unbearable at times? Could it be everyone is going through the same self-doubt and you are not fated to be un-understandable? Could it be the only one actually pressuring you to be you is…you? What does that even mean?
To clarify: What is stopping the first kid from being both squeaky-clean and untameable? Why can’t the second kid express passion for both physical sports and esports? Why are we, through earlier and earlier talk of college, idolization of internet celebrities, and publication of our lives, pressuring each other and ourselves to quickly—desperately—find and make homes out of labels?
You may find comfort that middle school is over. It is over. But the labels you shimmied into are alive and well. We hate middle school because it marks when exactly we settled on identities and killed the unconventional parts of ourselves, for better or for worse. We hate middle school because it reminds us of when we were even more unsure of the things of which we are still unsure. How unsettling.
How freeing it might be to let yourself believe, as you blink your eyes closed tonight, your gorgeous, heavy head atop your pillow, or mattress, or sack of dirt—whatever you use—that it is more than okay to not know where you fit. It’s more than okay to be a black-clad, untameable teacher’s pet who yells profanities at their computer when they’re not dominating at the gym. Let yourself believe it’s more than okay—saner, healthier—to live not within identities, but between them. Your middle school self will thank you.