A Word with Doug Wilhelm

I recently asked middle schoolers around the country to help me develop a followup novel to The Revealers. I asked them for true, uncensored advice on how to survive middle school.

Here’s what I said during several school visits: If you were talking with a younger person, someone you knew and cared about who was starting middle school next year, what would you tell them? Please write that, I said — and when you’re done, pass it in to me.

This week’s post is the final in a series of three that share the most interesting and most revealing advice they gave. The first week, I posted kids’ tips for dealing with teachers and other adults in school. Last week, the kids spoke from experience about dealing with other social groups, cliques, and other kids.

This post passes along kids’ most personal wisdom — how to act in middle school, whether you should try to be yourself or not, and what to do about drama, rumors, and the pressures to belong.

Here’s the advice I collected:

Be yourself. Don’t try to act like anyone else and always do your homework.

Do all of your work. Don’t be stuck up or a lot of the older girls especially won’t like you. To be popular, just try to be nice to everyone and don’t butt into other people’s problems. Try to stay AWAY from gossip. Gossip always turns out bad even if you don’t start it.

The one thing that I would want to say to a sixth grader is to be yourself. If you don’t be yourself then you will fall into the wrong category of people. There are three categories — popular, almost there, and what populars like to call the “Losers.” If you are a kid who does not want to be popular then pretend to be someone you aren’t. Then you will fall into the wrong category. This is what I did wrong.

To survive in middle school, you’ve gotta first of all keep kind of organized. If all of your stuff’s just thrown in a pile, then you’re probably not going to do well. You should try to make friends, because there are like groups in the middle school like preps, jocks, skaters, nerds, punk, wanna-be gangster kids. You should try to make a good group of your own with your friends in it because that’s how you will survive.

If you want to be a popular kid and a good student you have to be sorta two-faced. To teachers you need to be a good kid and listen and answer questions but to kids you got to be the tough guy or rebel and I guarantee you will be popular. Then kids will want you around them and look up to you and you will still be a good student and get good grades.

One huge problem in mostly seventh grade is DRAMA. Some people are kind of addicted to it, and those are the people you don’t trust. Only tell your secrets to a few people and do the best of your ability to pretend to like everybody. Keep the drama for the llama, and stay out of it. Also, flirting with people will help you stay on their good side. Ha ha.

Don’t be fake. Middle school is the time to mature and start becoming who you want to be like, feel like, sound like, and look like. Sometimes that can scare kids, but don’t fret. You can pick a group such as jocks or sporty kids or the class clown kind of kids. If you’re lucky and calm about it, you might be friends with everyone. Friends are key.

Some advice I have is don’t get caught up in all the rumors or gossip. Try to avoid all the drama. Get good friends that don’t hate or dislike you, but also keep up your grades or you’ll be swallowed up in all the stress.