Middle school: the most dreaded three years of your life. Stress, anxiety, and depression all wrapped into two unspeakable words. Three years filled with massive amounts of homework, negligible drama thought to be life-threatening, and sleep deprivation affecting not only you, but your classmates too, which, of course, creates an immense amount of anger towards anyone and everyone. So now I ask, how can you survive these three horrific years? The answer contains not one but three rules which will help to make your middle school experience bearable:

   
1. Eat to Distract from Annoyances

Getting annoyed with your friends, parents, and practically anyone else who you see on a daily basis is inevitable, so, of course, there will be times when you feel a sensation to argue about those little things that are moderately bothersome. When you’re stressed out and remain a bit sleep deprived, possibly some drama within your friend group, and overall you’ll be in a horrid mood because of it: you’re sure to want to explode. A classmate clicking his pencil, a friend telling an obvious lie, a small kick you feel on the back of your chair: two options will appear. Option A is to get into the argument, add unnecessary problems to your already complicated teen life, and, on top of that, end up apologizing in order to mend your relationship, or option B: forget it, leave it alone, and EAT.

2. Everyone Needs “Sick” Days
While locked in your own middle school confusion, you are forced to spend six hours, five times a week, sitting, utterly exhausted, overheated, stressed, and bored out of your mind, inside your very own middle school. You’ll spend this pleasurable time repeatedly checking the clock as it feels like school should be almost over, astonished to realize that you’ve been in class for a sole 5 minutes. After, what feels like years, school will be dismissed for the day and you’ll go off to play a sport, study intensively for the next day, or maybe even be forced to babysit your younger sister. No! Everyone needs a break once in awhile to escape from the middle schooler life, so get sick. Convince your parents of a serious headache, stomachache, nausea, or SOMETHING in order to fulfill your desperate need to catch up on tv and sleep!

3. Don’t Overthink Small Problems
During every middle schoolers scarce amount of free time, it is unavoidable to get lost in your thoughts- rethinking your own insignificant troubles and putting them on a much larger scale. Of course, there is an easy solution: binge-watch Netflix, go on a run, hangout with a friend, eat food, nap, or any activity you enjoy. While indulging in an activity, it's much harder to contemplate your own worries. Afterwards, you might even realize that your own problems aren’t that important. So try your best not to get annoyed, distract yourself from problems, eat food, and take some days off. Ultimately, everyone survives middle school, so you can too! I mean.. it’s only 3 years anyways.