What They Didn’t Tell You About Middle School

Ishan Khire is back with a wonderful treatise on life in middle school.

In this book Ishan will have to face the biggest challenge of his life: middle school. Suddenly, from arts and crafts week and eating mac and cheese with juice boxes at lunch, he’s thrust into an environment with 6 foot giants they call 8th graders, and a whole new world that watching TV could never have prepared him for. And suddenly, when things start going well, it’s time to pack his bags and move from California to a whole new country – India. Through navigating the crazy chaotic world of middle school politics, a brand new culture, and online school, Ishan takes you along on an adventure and prepares you for what they didn’t tell you about middle school.

Sample Text from What They Didn’t Tell You About Middle School

by Ishan Khire

I think Elementary schools should conduct workshops to introduce 5th graders to what middle school life is like.
I mean, you can’t expect innocent 5th graders to fly in blind to the three most important years of their entire childhood! Sure, there’s a middle school orientation that schools usually have a couple weeks before school, but they don’t answer the questions middle schoolers really want to know about, like ‘how do you become cool?’ or ‘what should you wear?’
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What They Didn’t Tell You About Middle School
But I’m getting ahead of myself. My name is Ishan. I live in Sunnyvale, California (in the US) and tomorrow is the first day of middle school! In the US, after elementary school (1st-5th grade), you go to a completely new school for 6th-8th grade. I’ve heard middle school is COMPLETELY different from elementary school, from the way teachers treat you to how kids behave. I’m really scared, so I’ve been preparing all week, binge watching middle school TV shows and reading the entire Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, while taking extensive notes. And after all that research, I’ve learned some key secrets to success.
For example:
How to be Popular:
If there’s anything I’ve learned from watching middle school TV series, it’s that popularity is everything. It gets you a lot of friends, boosts you up the middle school social hierarchy and gets you more followers on Instagram. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the hardest things to become. In elementary school, popularity basically meant having the coolest backpack. However, the requirements list for being popular in middle school is pretty long:
1. Wear cool clothes (since there’s no uniform)
2. Get into detention a lot (detention is boring)
3. Be really athletic (too hard)
4. Act cool (also too hard)
But this year, I’ve decided to try to be popular. Anyways, after you actually become popular, you don’t need to do too much to stay that way. So if I invest my efforts this year, the next two years will be a breeze. Of course, I hope this won’t be too big of a problem, since most people will already know me from my first book: “Life through the Eyes of a Ten Year Old” which talked about my life in elementary school.