Life is a constant flow of preparing for the next big thing in your life. Whether it’s taking your first steps or sending in your final college applications, you’re always moving onto the next big project in your life. Being in high school now, we all went through the three to four years of gruesome adolescence also known as middle school,  the awkward stage of figuring out who we are or who we want to be. The “life lessons” that middle school has provided us students some knowledge on what life might really be like. It also gave us the stepping stones we need to grasp the so called reality and huge experience we have coming up, high school.

While interviewing a few of our peers, we found out some shocking insight to the situation at hand.

Interviewer: What were you told in middle school about high school?

August Thorstenson (12): That it was going to be a lot cooler and that people were nicer and that it was going to be really hard.

Maya Richardson (12): I remember always hearing about how scary being a freshman was because everyone always said the seniors were really mean. I was told the “older kids” were scary. Our teachers also told us that we would get a huge workload and that everything would be super hard.

Zac Yahn (10): That you would have to be more responsible, no retakes on tests so you would have to study more and they’ll be giving us harder work because they were preparing us even though high school work isn’t even that hard.

Interviewer: Were they true?

AT: I wouldn’t say so, it’s more fun but not really harder.

MR: No, definitely not.

ZY: It’s definitely easier in high school because there are retakes and not as much homework as in middle school

Interviewer: What do you think of teachers in high school?

AT: The teachers are usually more friendly than the teachers in middle school. They’re easier to relate to.

MR: It depends on if you’re in honors/AP classes vs. regular. I’ve had teachers who clearly loved what they did and it actually felt like they cared about us people instead of just grade point averages, but this is rare. I mostly find these teachers in my higher level classes. In regular classes it often feels like the teacher doesn’t even care what’s going on let alone their students.

ZY: They’re chill, they definitely have more of a life to them and that also depends on the teacher.

Interviewer: Do you think you needed that hype of high school? Was it nice to get here and realize that things aren’t that hard?

AT: Not really, I don’t think they should have hyped it up as they did.

MR: No, the hype isn’t really a big deal to me. There are more important and long term things than the hype of high school. It was nice to get here and realize it wasn’t as scary or difficult as everyone made it seem.

ZY: No I don’t think I needed the extra work for no reason. Yeah definitely nice to get to blaine and realize that high school wasn’t as hard as it was made out to be.

Interviewer: In your years of schooling, were you ever taught anything that you were told that you would use that you never have?

AT: Realistically, everything that isn’t government classes or basic math or english I haven’t used yet.

MR: Definitely. A lot of what we have been told we would for sure be using I have yet to use.

ZY: Cursive! We were all told that we would use it all the time but do we ever? No!

Interviewer: What could possibly be beneficial about the situation regarding question number four?

AT: It scares them into working harder, also makes kids more nervous about school. So there’s definitely some negatives.

MR: Maybe someday I will have to find the length of a shadow based on how the sun is hitting a flagpole, and now I can do that.

ZY: Makes you realize that you have to do work, it helps you develop your work ethic I guess.

As you can see, there are many things in middle school that might not be needed for high school preparation. Hyping it up to something that it’s not is needed all the time but, in some ways getting here and realizing that it was easier and it was more relaxed than most middle school teachers made it out to be is comforting. In the end, teaching us things that we are not ever going to use is pretty foolish but preparing us for our next step is crucial.