why middle school do painful?

[JERONIMO]

k it's easy but painful.

[Gargamel]

Enjoy it now, life only gets harder the older you get.

Youth is wasted on the young - George Bernard Shaw

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Enjoy it now, life only gets harder the older you get.

Youth is wasted on the young - George Bernard Shaw

Literally this

Do yourself a favor and make the most of your life, take more risks, enjoy its details, lest you be wishing to relive your childhood to do the things you didn't years later in regret.

 

I heard this more than once when I was in middle school and dismissed it, thinking it was one of those "back in my day" adult talks, but today I don't know what I'd give to go back to those times. Don't make my mistake.

Edited May 10, 2019 by Guest

[Kerbart]

When you’re young, you think school is all about getting a diploma. Parents, teachers and everyone else certainly make it look that way.

When you’re no longer in school or college you come to realize that school is the time to learn. Maybe in the classroom, maybe not. School is too easy? Interested in a subject? Start studying it. Hard. Now is the time, and if you’re stuck your teachers can help you.

Go get that book on linear algebra. It might not be in the curriculum but why stop there? Good teachers will be thrilled your challenge to be taking something on and will help you.

[adsii1970]

It's funny. At one point in my life, I felt the same way. I was the awkward kid in junior high (yes, I am so old we didn't have stinkin' middle school in the ol' days). I wasn't very good at most sports except for baseball. I was in the school band and played the French horn. I was also a straight A student - except for physical education. I made Bs in that class. I was the kid that if you were having problems in math, science, history, or English, you came to me for help. But as far as friends go, I had about one or two through the entire junior high experience. 

In high school, I thought that it,  by far, trumped how bad junior high was. I was not only the band geek, but I was the head band geek (drum major). I was DoDDS first chair French horn player (a massive music competition involving all American military dependent's schools that held tryouts once a year) for four years in a row. I was also the lead trumpet player for the school's jazz and blues band, and still had high grades in the sciences, maths, history, electronics, two foreign language classes, and English classes. But the awkwardness continued. I hated high school.

I've learned one thing in life that I've shared with you up there: we tend to think that each stage of life we are currently in is the hardest and worst. You've got some good advice from a lot of folks here who have been through what you are going through. And believe me, one day you'll look back at what you're going through now and *poof* they become the "good ol' days" we older folk often talk about.

3 hours ago, Aperture Science said:

Do yourself a favor and make the most of your life, take more risks, enjoy its details, lest you wish to relive your childhood to do the things you didn't years later in regret.

I heard this more than once when I was in middle school and dismissed it, thinking it was one of those "back in my day" adult talks, but today I don't know what I'd give to go back to those times. Don't make my mistake. 

 

Here's the deal - make the most of whatever stage of life you're at. Don't worry about what other people think because they have their own problems they're dealing with! In our youth, it is very easy for us to judge ourselves by the way we hear others talking about us (if that makes sense). Take time to be yourself and to learn who you are - your likes and dislikes. What you're good at and what you suck at. @Aperture Science is right.

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

When you’re no longer in school or college you come to realize that school is the time to learn. Maybe in the classroom, maybe not. School is too easy? Interested in a subject? Start studying it. Hard. Now is the time, and if you’re stuck your teachers can help you.

To a point. But when you stop learning you stop living. Sure, I have a Ph.D. in U.S. history and U.S. foreign policy. But I still am learning. I'm reading all kinds of books regarding the colonization of Mars, some of the books published in the 1890s while others are published between the 1950s through 2010. Not because I have to, but because I want to understand the nuts and bolts of what needs to happen to make it a reality.

[Kernel Kraken]

On 5/10/2019 at 5:15 PM, adsii1970 said:

but I was the head band geek (drum major). I was DoDDS first chair French horn player (a massive music competition involving all American military dependent's schools that held tryouts once a year) for four years in a row. I was also the lead trumpet player for the school's jazz and blues band

Hey can you tell me why everyone trashes percussion no matter what band you're in I'm feeling sad

[Gargamel]

2 hours ago, Kernel Kraken said:

Hey can you tell me why everyone trashes percussion no matter what band you're in I'm feeling sad

Oh no.... oh no.... In my band, drum line were the big baddies of the the band.    Percussion and Tuba's are the renegades of any good band.  We had our own bus with the cheerleaders.  Just start adding rimshots to any lecture the instructor is trying to give.   Drummers are the ones that scare the football players. 

[adsii1970]

3 hours ago, Kernel Kraken said:

drum major

In the American high school band, a drum major isn't a percussionist, necessarily.  See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_major_(marching_band)

[Nuke]

you should have went to the school i went to. it was the dumping ground for sociopaths and other failed attempts at humans. everyone was a bully so it made an interesting dynamic. sometimes it was their turn and sometime it was ours. students bet on the fights. i hung out with two of the crazier students. one was a crazy russian with a blackbelt in tae kwon do, and the other was fond of self mutilation and bb guns, he killed himself about a dozen years ago. it was the 90s but we all listened to 70s and 80s metal and we all wore black trench coats (columbine had just happened and we had more in common with the slayers than the slain) while everyone else just wore flannel.  its ok because the school had metal detectors and a security guard for every 10 students, a couple of them were former nfl football players. because of all the hostility it was common for students to get tackled and dragged off to an isolation room (much like the ones you find in mental institutions). kids who got floored by they one day would often be talking sports with them the next day.  we mostly got graded on behavior and academics were practically non existent, we were doing fractions on our senior year, they called it review, but we never moved on to anything beyond that. you could pass just showing up for class. later few years of high shcool they would bus us off to another school that did vocational training, i took computer science and then an electronics class. the electronics class had me doing math i didnt even know existed. all the time on the school buses led to other interesting shenanigans. the junkie thrash metal crowd (kind of an extension to our 3 man group though not completely comprising shared interests) used the interchange as a chance to smoke dope, i joined them once or twice. i ended up staying an extra semester after my senior year to finish my electronics class, and because my buddies were a grade year below me. on my graduation (being mid year there were only 2 students) my russian buddie thought it would be interesting to poke me in the buttocks with the american flag. the teachers weren't bad, many of them meant well, but they were shoehorned into a dumping ground for social rejects thought up by some politician who just wanted us out of the way.  they were told they could do some good and help at risk students, and then got no budget to do it. the average low iq of the students allowed me to sweep all the engineering contests held by my science and math teachers. rocketry, egg drops, bridge building, marble floats, etc. i won em all. this was before participation trophies too. for winning they gave me a certificate printed off of an old dot matrix printer and was most certainly made on a mac se (one of the higher end computers we got to use). they were the dumping ground for the old apple 2s the school district was phasing out. because of my oddball schedule i had a whole 45 minutes of free time every day. and so for fun i slapped apple 2 parts together until i got working machines, i set up a computer lab with a stack of pirated apple2 games (the school certainly didnt buy them. i honestly dont know where most of them came from, the apple 2 was certainly well beyond its usefulness by then so it wasn't any of the current students at the time. but i made sure every class room had a copy of all the disks. except on thursdays when the weight room was open. we did more screwing around that actually pumping iron. if there wasnt a fight or unrelenting pranks, or students smoking, or doing a number of other things that were technically against the rules, then we would just sit around and chit chat and let the weights crash. the ta only looked in a couple times if we got too loud. the whole thing was in a converted storage closet and so there was no visibility to the rest of the gym. we didnt even have showers which is why no one took gym class seriously.  the smart kids would have social studies first and gym last. the social studies teacher was an old hippy lady that ran class like a game show, with prizes. i won many. she always brought snacks and if you got there early you would get the lions share. all in all it was a lot of fun, despite the fact that it was a half step up from juvie. 

[Kernel Kraken]

4 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

In the American high school band, a drum major isn't a percussionist, necessarily.  See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_major_(marching_band)

I was thinking since you were not in percussion you could tell me why the winds hate us 

4 hours ago, Gargamel said:

We had our own bus with the cheerleaders.  

I freaking wish. Just disassemble the marimbas and xylophones and shove them in the directors car and put us in the same bus as the other winds. On the bright side the percussionists end up starting massive chants so we end up screaming All Star for 4t minutes.

4 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Just start adding rimshots to any lecture the instructor is trying to give.

Imagine a hellbat and a beluga whale had a child and the child ain't got rythm and you have my band director. Sounds great, probably will get kicked out.

Edited May 12, 2019 by Kernel Kraken

[adsii1970]

9 minutes ago, Kernel Kraken said:

I was thinking since you were not in percussion you could tell me why the winds hate us 

Oh, that's easy to do. On occasion, some percussionists want to be "clickish" in the band. They see themselves as a stand-offish group and are territorial. Then there's the other aspect - most woodwind and brass players are dismissive of how difficult percussion instruments can be. We've all heard the story that it doesn't take much talent to "beat a drum," but in actuality, it does.

My first attempt at attending the university, I was a music theory and composition major. Being a French horn player, I had to add a woodwind and a percussion instrument to round out my instrumental basics. For the woodwind, I chose the oboe, and for the percussion instrument, I decided to learn orchestral chimes and the snare drum, those being the two primary percussion instruments.

The reasoning was this. With the French horn, you can easily self-teach yourself the rest of the brass family even though the French horn is considered a woodwind. And the oboe? Although it is a double reed, it has the same fingerings, mostly, as does the rest of the woodwind family.

21 minutes ago, Kernel Kraken said:

Imagine a hellbat and a beluga whale had a child and the child ain't got rythm and you have my band director. Sounds great, probably will get kicked out.

And this is sad. Sounds like when your band director was in school himself, and early in his musical training, he never learned the basics of rhythm or counting.  Unfortunately, this is very common.

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, Kernel Kraken said:

Just disassemble the marimbas and xylophones and shove them in the directors car

The drums. pit and tubas had their own bus.  Not the people, just the instruments.  It was a specially modified bus (ie not safe enough anymore to carry kids) that was built to carry those things.   The drum line, Tubas and Cheerleaders had another bus, and the rest of the band filled out the other 7.    Think we had 250+ in the band? That's 250 for 4 years of school.   My graduating class only had 244.  So slightly more than 1 in 4  was in the band.   So yeah, at my HS, being a band member carried some weight. 

Just be proud of who you are and what you do, and wear it all like a badge of courage. 

40 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

They see themselves as a stand-offish group and are territorial.

Yes, that might just be a good way to describe us. 

[roboslacker]

Why is middle school painful? In my experience, it's because the student body is awful. For some reason, between elementry school and high school all the delinquents acted up. It was horrible. For me, the very worst was in my 8th grade science class. Usually about half the class would be wasted trying to silence the students. By the end of the year the teacher had given up on teaching anything.

TLDR: Middle school is horrible, but High School is worth it.

[cubinator]

1 minute ago, roboslacker said:

TLDR: Middle school is horrible, but High School is worth it.

I'll add that college is really worth it. My life is really going in a lot of interesting directions right now.

==========================

Just hang in there, and remember that the actions of others don't dictate who you are.

[StellaGraham]

haha

for me it wasn't so painful 

[magnemoe]

On 5/10/2019 at 9:02 PM, Gargamel said:

Enjoy it now, life only gets harder the older you get.

Youth is wasted on the young - George Bernard Shaw

Disagree, I found higher education way better, university even more so first part might be an highlight, early carrier was extremely bumpy because joined an friend trying to start some companies who went very kerbal, later carrier was good but a bit dull. 

First you are an young teen among other young teens, avoid this at all cost. 
Also you have all sort of people together, once you get to high school you are older its also an selection process here who select out most of the idiots. 
Select an line who is known to be hard and / or require decent grades to boost this. 
Relative who did trade school for construction knew that loads of others was forced by the parents to continue schooling and the construction path is pretty easy to get into. 
yes they should stayed some years at an supermarket or an warehouse and plumber would be very nice. Electrician avoided this as its math heavy and harder to get into. 

Again some carriers are pretty cut trough other use you as disposable labor, avoid even if they pay well. That is unless you only use it as an stepping stone 
 

[kerbiloid]

That's because the school was invented by Sith Lords, who are trying to rise the rage in you, to have you on the Dark Side of Force.

Don't treat it as a challenge, treat it as an experience.

Edited July 13, 2019 by kerbiloid

[KerbolExplorer]

On 5/10/2019 at 8:02 PM, Gargamel said:

Enjoy it now, life only gets harder the older you get.

Youth is wasted on the young - George Bernard Shaw

Don't scare me

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, KerbolExplorer said:

Don't scare me

The social issues pretty much evaporate as your age group matures.  Those pressures are eventually replaced, and surpassed, by the constraints of adult hood: bills, career, no longer (usually) having a parental figure to rely on.  Then you continue to age, and often you are then entrusted with some small humans of your own.  Their issues will become, in some form, your issues too.  And then, as you grow older, your body begins to fail, slowly at first, you'll find you can often no longer do the same things you used to do 30 years ago, and you miss those days.  And then eventually, just making it through your daily routine is your goal, and sometimes that can be a struggle. 

But all the while, you realize you have become much wiser than you were, and how much a fool you were.  But then you also realize, for very step along the path, you have come to this same conclusion.  Repeatedly.  It dawns on you, for how much you think you have it figured out, you still know nothing.  Eventually, one day, you'll have it all down.  But then you won't have the time to act on it.

So I'll requote Mr. Shaw, Youth is wasted on the young.

Scary enough?

So go out, face your fears, try everything, and do all the things you think you might want to do, while you can.  Time is fleeting, and you'll never get those moments back.  Ask out your crush, learn to knit, climb a mountain, find an adventure, no matter how mundane to others, and tackle it head on.