[Andrew NDB]

1st - 5th grade were awesome. That was some grade-A fun kid stuff. Building forts, playing games on the playground, sleepovers, birthday parties, all that stuff. I was the kid with the big backyard and big pool with a diving board, so a lot of people at school and the neighborhood wanted to be my buddy.

6th - 8th grade was not so great. It felt so different. Multiple teachers and no recess? I remember being pissed. I adapted. Nothing too memorable. Some friends stayed friends, some grew apart from. First couple of fights around 7th or 8th.

At the start of 9th grade, my parents moved cities, citing that the neighborhood was "too dangerous" where we lived (ironically, I'd never even seen anyone doing drugs in the old city, but as soon as we moved to the new one, I saw it everywhere). In the old city, elementary is 1-5, middle school is 6-8, and high school is 9-12... so after 8, I was looking forward to attending Foster High School, with all of my friends. Not so! And in the new city, there was no middle school... there was only junior high, and it went into 9! So a whole other year before I could get into high school... wasn't happy about that. But anyway, this was all different. I didn't know anybody so I had to make new friends. Which I did. Got my first couple of girlfriends. Homework started becoming crazy. I wasn't super popular but I wasn't any sort of outcast, either. I hung with people from each of the cliques back then, which seem easily compartmentable as the Preps, Rappers, Goths, Skaters, and Geeks. There really was no other category back then.

And that's it, really. I won a couple of district level creative writing contests through 9-12 and that's about my only notable achievement. I didn't really enjoy any of the classes but I didn't, like, loathe going either.