I’m going to be completely honest right off the bat. I have had probably the most mediocre middle school experience. I hate to admit it, I really do, but it’s the truth. Just because someone is involved in a lot of things doesn’t mean that they have a lot of memories.

One thing I do profoundly remember is band. Band class, after-school band, and jazz band. We all came together, despite our different social groups and statuses, and shared a special talent. We all made something beautiful together. But it wasn’t really like that anywhere else.

I remember this year was the first year that I had art class as an elective. And there were some popular people, some nerds, and some in-between. And always, every class, there was a person who would say hi to me. They would smile and say something like “Hi little lady,” or “Hey girlie.” They made me smile every time. In that class, it didn’t matter that they were more popular than me. We were all talented, so we were all the same popularity rank.

But then we would all go to lunch after fifth period and be back in the normal status quo of things.

What makes popularity? Is it our clothes? Our hair? Our grades? How pretty or handsome we are? How we talk? What we talk about? Why are some people more popular than others even though they are both pretty and like the same things?

I can tell you first-hand, I’ve been in public schooling for 9 years and I still don’t know.

But I guess it’s because popularity changes. Believe it or not, I was kind of popular in elementrary school. I liked the average things a girl my age should’ve liked, High School Musical, Hannah Montana, The Jonas Brothers. But then my popularity dropped because I didn’t stop liking those things soon enough. So I gave up, started liking things like Teen Titans and Power Rangers. I became popular in my own crowd, the nerds.

That brings me to another thing. Why do we have cliques? Cliques mush and change all the time. You can be a nerd one moment and then suddenly you’re popular because you’re wearing a Sleeping With Sirens shirt or something. But then the next day you wear a Doctor Who shirt and you’re a nerd again.

Who made the whole “nerd” thing anyway? On tumblr wearing a Doctor Who shirt wouldn’t make me a nerd. It would make me seem cool, popular, “in-the-know.” On YouTube, it would make me seem like a nerdy hipster. On Instagram I’d get comments saying “OMG me too!” But in middle school I’m a nerd.

When we grow up; when we’re looking for colleges and finding internships, are we going to try and be popular? Truthfully answer that question in your mind, will you care about being popular in five years? Ten years? Twenty? I won’t. And I bet you probably won’t either. You’ll be working hard at a job you hopefully love, maybe with some pets, a significant other, even children. But you’re not really gonna care that your coworker Susan has more Facebook friends than you.

The real question is, why do we even care about popularity? Why do we kill ourselves over the fact that someone has more Instagram followers than us? Why do we stoop ourselves to that level of self-worth, crying over someone elses’ reputation? I’m speaking for every one of my classmates right now, none of us like it. You can pretend all you want but everyone knows that it gets tiring trying to keep up a pretty smile like nothing is wrong.

So why don’t we just mush together. Make memories as a class, not as social groups. Sit with our friends, not with our clique. High school is going to be a chance to do that.

I want you to think about you in twenty years again. Ask your future self, “Does it get better, for me?” And I guarantee you that they’ll say “Yes.”