Seventh Grade - Learning to Navigate High School

As I opened my locker, checked my image in the magnetized mirror hanging in the door. My bangs had started to fall. It was time for a quick run to the bathroom and a spritz or two from my hairspray in my purse. But with just five minutes to get from one class to the next before being deemed tardy, I didn’t know if I had time. I would just have to wait until lunch.

Seventh grade brought me into the world of high school. Our school did not, at the time, have much separation between high school and junior high. We roamed the halls with the ninth through twelfth grades, doing our best to keep our heads above water.

Without Debbra in my class, I had to make new friends. Luckily, some new faces hit the scene. I remember specifically Paula H, Rachel D, August B, and Becky B, all of whom I connected with fairly well that year or the next.

I think seventh grade really solidified in my mind the fact that I was not “popular.” I think it bothered me more than I wanted to admit. While I liked the friends I had, I wanted to fit in, and specifically I wanted boys to notice me. When you stand head and shoulders over most of your classmates, including the boys, it’s hard to blend in with the crowd. I also thought I was fat. Looking back on pictures, I realize that I was nothing of the sort, but I was larger than most of my classmates, both in stature and build, and I always felt overweight. Now, I can only wish to be back at that weight. Finally, I had this huge head of bushy hair that I had not learned to control. Yeah, you can see it in the piano picture. It was really that bad.

That year I had a huge crush on a boy in our class. It was huge. I remember that he had this small gray Bible. Math class was after chapel, so he would have his Bible with him. He sat not far from me, and I would always steal his Bible, stick it in my purse, leaving just the bookmark ribbon sticking out. I have no idea what he thought of this, but I thought it was very funny.

One incident sticks out to me as far as teachers, and it really impacted some of how I taught when I was teaching. We had a teacher who was in his first year of teaching. Our class was horrible. We were just awful. Instead of using the discipline system that was in place at the time, this particular teacher decided to start assigning us to write sentences, and have our parents sign them. I got sentences assigned one day. It happened to be the day my brother had a surgery. I don’t even think I saw my parents that day for more than an hour. I did the sentences, but didn’t get them signed. Rather than listening to me, he just assigned more. Granted, I’m sure most of us, as seventh graders, had an excuse, but if a family member is having surgery, things just aren’t’ normal at home. Looking back, I’m sure he was at his whit’s end being a first year teacher with a class such as ours, but it solidified in my mind that I would listen to my students within reason when I taught.

In seventh grade I was obsessed with “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” a TV show about a female doctor back in the frontier days. When our church started a junior high youth program called Pro Teens, I really struggled with whether or not I should attend. The meetings were on Saturday night, the same time as my beloved Dr. Quinn. When I mentioned this to my parents, my mom chastised me for being so addicted to a TV show that I would put it in front of God. Luckily we had our trusty VHS machine, so my parents faithfully recorded my show for me while I went off to ProTeens and learned verses and Bible doctrines.

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