The Most Dangerous Environment — Middle School

June is a magical month when you work at an elementary school. It is a time for new beginnings — as in summer vacations. When you work at an elementary school, you tend to revert back to that childhood mentality you thought suppressed so many years ago. So June also becomes a time for endings such as the ones that come from culminations.

At the most recent graduation, the sound of “Pomp and Circumstance” blasted through the PA system and through my head. I witnessed a new class of fifth graders take one step into the unknown – middle school. They do not even know what is waiting for them on the other side of that fence.  Some of them will adapt.  Some of them will never have a chance.  This is the physical definition or sink or swim.  There comes a time when we all go from being small fish in a small pond to becoming small fish in a small ocean.

If you put a gun against my head and gave me a choice between serving time in prison or reliving my days in middle school, I would probably ask what the weather is like in San Quentin.  Middle school is a hard storm to weather. It’s that layer of dogmatic hell that can be found somewhere between purgatory and limbo.  Middle school is that special time in a person’s life where teachers start to refer to you by my surname or whatever they feel your surname is since they don’t take too kindly to being corrected.  Personally, I spent the first semester of health class known as “Vargas.”

I did not have much fun in middle school. The same girls I had been sitting next to three months prior were not the same girls anymore. They wore makeup. Their bodies were changing, and they were looking more and more like the girls from the neighboring high school. However, I still looked the same although I did not sound the same.  The boys I once played on the playground with came back as hulking bags of sweat and acne.  I was still nursing the collapse of the last of my baby teeth and these guys were bench pressing emotional turmoil.  It was somewhat intimidating.  A lot of my friends’ voices were evolving into low growls and croaks. I was not that fortunate. My voice rose high to the point where I became a selective mute.

But unlike many of my classmates, I endured.  I found the strength to survive the hazing and pettiness.  The Earth might have opened up; swallowing some of my humanity in the process, but it made me a better person in the end.  I am confident that these students and anyone else going into that particular meat grinder will find that perseverance is worth fighting for, even if you have to sink a little before you can swim.

But for the fifth graders earlier this month, I stood on that stage shaking hands with ones I hope to see again.  I know that all of them will not return as captains of industry, but I can only hope they can say they chased the hell out of their dreams.  As I looked into the crowd, I saw an ocean of expectations in the faces of parents and well-wishers.  After all, these culminations are not meant to be confused with graduations – but that too will be lost in translation.  These are children.  They are the heirs of our present and the builders of promises we failed to build upon.

Follow Oscar Barajas on Twitter @Oscarcoatl