It was... okay.
Eighth grade wasn't a good year for me. It started getting harder to keep up my grades, and around the beginning of the year, all these events that had been building up since the previous year just kind of collapsed around me and my friends. Basically, my entire social structure just kind of ~imploded. Most of still liked each other, but the group we were all a part of ceased to exist, and I spent most of that year being liked by almost everyone, buy not really being part of one group. And then academically, I just held up as well as I could.
I did a People to People trip to Europe that summer, which was a really fun and memorable experience, and then when Freshman year started, everything kind of just stayed the same, but it was made worse by the shift from middle school to high school. I was in almost all honors classes, plus one more language course than almost everyone else - which was good, but it was a lot for me to handle. I took an honors combined English/Social Studies, Freshman-only class that just overwhelmed me in so many ways. It kind of messed up my schedule, the concepts went COMPLETELY over my head, and I did really badly on most of the assignments. It got to the point where I basically stopped trying altogether; not studying for tests, not handing in essays, etc... The teachers were really good, but their styles did nothing to help me understand the material - the whole thing just stressed me out all year. Since the class was combined, there were about 45 other kids, but I didn't get along with any of them. I'm a smart person, but I've never really hung out with other really smart kids; it's not intentional, but my friends have usually been mid to high intelligence level, so none of them were in this class. My best friend in there was this other fairly smart girl who didn't really give a **** and was in the same boat as me for the most part.
In math, I had an awful teacher who hated me, and before the year was halfway over, I dropped out into the next highest class with an average of 37 in the original one. And my other classes were all OK, but again, I didn't have a ton of friends in any of them, and regardless of whether or not my teachers were good, I didn't have strong relationships with any of them. Socially, things basically picked up where they left off. I could hang out with anyone because I knew almost all of the kids in my grade, but again, I felt like I didn't "belong" to any singular group. My specific classes made it worse because I ended up losing contact with some of my best friends, but I didn't MAKE a lot of new friends since the ones I was with were mostly nerds. Eventually, after I did horribly on midterms, I got a tutor, and by the third quarter I was doing really well academically again, which I guess helped my social life too by putting me in a better mood. And then I did well on finals and it was over.
I know I made it seem like the year was awful, but it honestly just kind of went by without anything too significant happening. And then Sophomore year came, which was just... SO much better, Oh my god
And wow, I did not mean to type this much at all.
