In eighth grade, something in me broke that would affect me for years. Two somethings actually: my tibia and my spirit. A weekend before Thanksgiving, I was running an obstacle course on the primary-colored playground of the local elementary school with my dad and my brother. We’d wandered there together with the intention of spending …
No one wants to go back to middle school. Not a single person, with the possible exception of Billy Gilman, wants to revisit that period of our lives. Nothing went right, everything was unfair and we feel trapped inside our moody, horny, sprouty selves. We kick off adolescence excited we're no longer in elementary school …
"I learned about Y2K in my middle school history class." My friend works at a large university and she sometimes texts me things she hears students say in passing. She and I graduated within a year of each other so our reference points are similar and it’s always entertaining to hear how people a generation …
When I was a freshman in high school, I spent the first half of the school year eating lunch alone. The already awkward transition from junior high to high school was made even more awkward by the fact I wasn’t walking those foreign hallways with a familiar group of friends. I didn’t really care who …
Continue reading "The Loneliest Place in High School: The Lunch Room"
In my life to date, the “Things I Thought I’d Be Incredible At” list is long and tortured while the “Things I’m Actually Incredible At” list is startling in its brevity. No one’s incredible at everything, even if on the surface it appears that way, and no matter what, there’s something they’re bad at—be it …
Ryan Brinson 