Here's an essay I wrote and I'm quite proud of it. Please don't hate, because I know it's bad since I stayed up until midnight to finish it (see title) and I just spelled "bad" as "bread".

We were supposed to write about a major turning point in our lives.

I can't think of a part of my life that changed me more than when I started middle school. Before that I was quite shy and mostly stuck with my small group of friends that I've known for years. But at middle school, with so many different people I've never met before, I learned how to open up, and I've learned how to make friends with people I've never talked to before. (Although it's mostly with friends of friends, but it's a start!) I have also been in different classes and clubs than in elementary school, and they have taught me about hard work and sticking with a project, even if it seems impossible. My teachers have taught me about how to have fun in class, but still learn a lot. My teachers in middle school have been my favorite teachers ever, and I have learned a lot from them, and I've changed a lot in just two years.

    In elementary school, everyone stuck with their own groups, and people barely ever switched to a different group or had friends in two different groups. Since most of us had been together since Pre-K, the only way for a group to gain someone new was if we got a new student, which was pretty rare. It was actually mostly just people on the same sports team and then everyone else just grouped themselves together as to not be alone. But when we went to middle school, that all changed. We learned to branch out and to intertwine our groups. Our friend groups are always changing and we all have a different group of people to turn to if we need it. I think it was all the new people and the fact that the kids who had been at the top all those years were just like the rest of us; we were all equal. Most people actually have very few of the same friends as they did in elementary school. Partially because we get split up into two different mini schools and there's only a 50/50 chance of being with somebody, but mostly because we met new people, we no longer had to stick with a select few, and simply because we grew up and changed a lot. This has made me much more outgoing and I have a much bigger group of friends and, yet, we're much closer than we ever were when we were younger.

    The thing about my elementary school, is that you could play a sport, or be in chorus. That was about it. If you didn't do those things, there wasn't an after school activity for you. And those things don't teach you anything. You exercise, but it's not like you couldn't do that anyways. You learn teamwork, but does it mean anything if it's with people you've known since you were four? You make music, but we didn't learn. We were given a song, and told to memorize it. But in middle school, there was more than sports and a one-day-a-week chorus. You could be in Band and actually learn how to make music your own. You could join a sport with people you've never met. You could join art club and challenge your creativity. You could be in Knowledge Bowl and challenge your mind. There were so many things you could do, and I learned so much, from how to make a song right for you, to that there's more to art than copying a picture.

And I was given the amazing opportunity to take a class called Gateway to Technology. (GTT) We learned about engineering, problem-solving, and cooperation. We were taught how to use the things we learned in the classroom and put it to use in the real world. We learned how to work things out on our own; if something didn't work, our teacher simply told us to figure out why. Because you can't fix something if you don't know why it doesn't work in the first place. "And surely-to-goodness you're not the first person to have that problem, so look it up. You have a computer for a reason." That's what he would tell us. I learned so much from the different opportunities I was given once I entered the seventh grade.

    The teaching style of my teachers in middle school are very different from what we did in elementary school. There, we were told the information, did worksheet after worksheet, and took a test. But, now, after we learn the information the first time, we do projects and fun exercises to go over it. To learn about the Ming Dynasty in seventh grade, we made little booklets about what

thought was important. To learn about Edgar Allen Poe just a few months ago, we put on a play about Dracula to learn how he influenced literature. And not only that, but instead of zipping through the state standards and spending the entire last quarter reviewing for standardized testing, my science teacher made sure that we all knew the material before moving on to the next topic. We only had a couple of weeks to review, but we already knew the material like the back of our hands, it was just a matter of finding out what we had forgotten and refreshing. With these unique styles of teaching, I have learned that the best way to learn something new is to experience it. Not to read about it for countless hours, but to actually do something and really know what it was like.

    Middle school has turned me from a shy little girl who just wanted to fit in with a small group of people into someone who embraces who they are, and loves every second of it, no matter what other people think. I learned that the best friends you could have are the ones how love you for who you are. I learned to work hard and to think outside the box when you're facing a problem. And I learned that the best way to go through life is to experience it, not to read about it through someone else's eyes. The two years I spent in middle school has changed me so much, that it is impossible to pinpoint the actual point in time that it changed me for the better, so I'll just say that it started the moment I walked through the doors on the first day, and will end as I watch the building be slowly hidden by trees as we drive home from school next Friday.