Editor’s note: Young Writers Project, a Vermont nonprofit dedicated to helping students write well, will be sharing several exceptional pieces of best student work each week at VTDigger.org for special display over the weekend. We hope you appreciate the young writers’ viewpoints, imagination and experiences. Please let us know what you think.
Sarah Potter, a seventh-grade student at Camels Hump Middle School in Richmond, wrote this essay in response to a prompt to write about issues and observations about middle school for a statewide VPR-Young Writers Project Writing Challenge.
Middle School!
By Sarah Potter,
a seventh-grader at Camels Hump Middle School
The first day I got here I was like, “Sarah Potter, what were you thinking!?” I remember coming through the doors being a wimpy little girl with tiny braids and beads in her hair and thinking, “Holy cow, why is everyone so tall? Especially him! And why does he have grey hair and a beard…” And then I was like, “Oh, that’s the principal!” He had a lot of piercings in his ears so I wasn’t sure if he was actually the principal or not.
And then I saw big kids holding hands and groups of girls laughing and “clumping” and I was thinking to myself, in the 10 seconds that I was blocking the doorway, I really hope that that’s not me in four years. But it turned out… that’s me and my clump of friends today.
Every day after that, I hung out with two girls, Allison and Elena. They are probably my best friends even today! We laugh and cry together (crying because we are laughing so hard). We fight so much, but it always ends with a smile. We all share a love for soccer. Allison and I are on Farpost U13 premier team and Elena is on Nordic U13 Club team.
Even though we are all very competitive, we leave the hard times on the field.
When I knew that I wasn’t going to be in the same class as them for two whole years, and then when I found out in seventh grade I wouldn’t be in their class again, I didn’t know what to do! I see them a lot on the weekends and after school, too (maybe too much). But my favorite memories from middle school are lunch with Allison and Elena. We talk and laugh and cry because we are laughing so hard – that’s the only time we really get to talk to each other.
Next year, I want to enjoy more memories with them, but maybe in the same class. Even though I had a really great time with my 5th, 6th, and 7th grade teachers and classmates, it would be much more fun with those two girls.
About YWP
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in 19 newspapers across Vermont and in parts of New Hampshire and on Vermont Public Radio. It runs an online teen writing community, youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: be respectful. It works with teachers in 63 schools who use YWP’s unique, free digital classroom platform and provides many with ongoing professional development mentoring and other teacher training. And it is developing NxN, a writing center at its Burlington headquarters. For more, go to youngwritersproject.org or ywpschools.net.
If you are a youth or you know a youth who is passionate about something and works hard at it, be it building models or flying or playing the drums or climbing cliffs, please contact Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org and tell him something about the youth and how to get in touch with her or him.
