September 15, 2012 WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU’RE SCARED OF MIDDLE SCHOOL This Ask Nikki question comes from Bre. She writes: I just started 5th grade and the more I go to school each week the more I think about middle school. It’s giving me NIGHTMARES! Everyone is talking about how cool middle school is going to be, but I think it’s going to be a NIGHTMARE!! Is middle school really that bad? I’m a dork so that’s going to make it 10 times worse! My advice: Hi Bre! I can totally understand why you’re nervous. I was SUPER scared to start middle school!! I was totally freaking out about having a locker. I thought I’d forget the combination, the bell would ring, and I wouldn’t have ANY of my stuff, and then I’d get screamed at in class while some mean girl made fun of me with her nasty friends. OK to be honest some of that stuff has actually happened. Hey, I can’t lie to you! But it didn’t happen all at once, and it was never as bad as I thought it would be. The time I couldn’t remember my combination, I figured it out as soon as I stopped freaking out, and I was just a couple minutes late for class. And none of my teachers have EVER screamed at me…not even the time I forgot my homework, panicked, and said, “Um, my pig ate it!” (Seriously, I couldn’t have come up with a better lie?! Who has a pet pig?) As for the mean girl making fun of me, that happens A LOT with MacKenzie! But I have awesome friends who would NEVER do that to me, and we’ve had so much fun going to dances, being in talent shows, and stuff. There’s just a TON about middle school that’s really fun! So my advice to you is not sweat it so much! First of all, you’re not in middle school yet, so why drive yourself nuts worrying about it? If you do that, you probably won’t enjoy fifth grade as much. But besides that, middle school will be SO much better and nowhere near as scary as you imagine it will be. I mean, think about it this way: Have you ever worried about moving up a grade before? At the end of third grade, my teacher was all like, “Pay attention people! This kind of effort won’t cut it next year. Fourth grade tests are going to be SO MUCH harder!” But then I got to fourth grade, and I mean it obviously wasn’t third grade, but it’s not like I couldn’t handle it. It’s the same with going to middle school! It definitely won’t be ANYTHING like your nightmares. It wasn’t anything like mine! (It really couldn’t be…I have some totally weird nightmares, involving vampires, zombies, and showing up at school naked!) So that’s my advice. Put into a simple math equation, it looks like this: Focusing on 5th grade – freaking out about middle school + trusting you’ll be A OK next year = super fun year! What do you guys think? Do you have any advice for Bre?