{"id":1430,"date":"2003-09-10T16:50:11","date_gmt":"2003-09-10T23:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2003\/09\/10\/1430.html"},"modified":"2003-09-10T16:50:11","modified_gmt":"2003-09-10T23:50:11","slug":"middle-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2003\/09\/10\/middle-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle school"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was apparently in a cynical mood this morning, because when I woke up about half of the below was floating around in my head. The funny thing is, I was actually pretty happy in middle school (also in elementary school and high school), but I know a lot of people were miserable.<\/p>\n

(For those who aren't familiar with it, middle school is like a reduced version of junior high school. For us it was 7th and 8th grade, with high school being 9th through 12th.)<\/p>\n

In retrospect, it turns out this is such an obvious parody that there's already a book with a similar title. Ah, well.<\/p>\n

All I really need to know I learned in middle school:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. There are popular people and unpopular people. Hint: You're not one of the popular people.<\/li>\n
  2. Being liked by those in authority increases the chances of being successful.<\/li>\n
  3. American society consists of hierarchies of dominance.<\/li>\n
  4. You will be labeled and categorized (usually derogatorily) whether you want to be or not.<\/li>\n
  5. Expressing romantic interest in someone leaves you vulnerable to painful rejection.<\/li>\n
  6. Grooming and looks will get you far.<\/li>\n
  7. Failure to meet deadlines has a negative effect on performance reviews.<\/li>\n
  8. Insecurity and fear are potent motivators.<\/li>\n
  9. The strong can and do attack the weak.<\/li>\n
  10. Physically fit but mean people get more dates than socially maladjusted but nice people.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I was apparently in a cynical mood this morning, because when I woke up about half of the below was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}