Before I got this job and started my big-girl life, I spent a year doing a lot of substitute teaching for grades 5-12. Highschoolers could always spot me for the young person I am, forcing me to walk the precarious tightrope of “young cool sub”(you know the one who is both fun AND strict?) But the middle schoolers… The middle schoolers thought I was a grownup. They called me Ms. Thieme with perfect sincerity, and asked me how many babies I have.
At first I wondered how they never caught on to the fact that I had no clue what I was doing, but then as I kept working with them I realized that they are CHILDREN. They are so young! I know it’s been over a decade, but middle school doesn’t feel that long ago to me. I still hold onto so much awkwardness that I feel like middle-school-grace about a quarter of the time. Was I that clueless at 12?
Because y’all they are SO YOUNG! They’re fledgling teenagers, showing all of the signs of impending teenagerhood, but tempered by the last vestiges of childhood honesty. They cannot be subtle. They have “secret” crushes, they’re catty, they play power games… But standing at the front of the classroom you can see all of it playing out in real time. They’re (sometimes literally) SCREAMING their inner thoughts at you at all times.
So while I often associate my present-day awkwardness with middle school, I know that middle-school-grace could never comprehend the subtlety of the awkwardness that I experience as a baby-adult. Honestly, realizing that was a game changer. It made me start to actually feel like the adult in that room. I may not feel like a grownup in any other aspect of my life, but in front of a room full of 12 year olds? Just being able to hide what you’re thinking is enough to make you feel like you have your shit together.
I’m not trying to say that hanging out with middle schoolers is the answer to feeling like a grownup, but honestly it helped. Middle schoolers are trying so hard to be cool young adults, but they fail SO HARD that it makes you automatically feel grown up by comparison. I can drive, I have money of my own, I can cook, I’ve had sex, I can travel by myself… Not to mention that I have a degree, a job, and an apartment.
I get caught up all the time looking at my friends who are a few years older, who make more money than me, who are getting engaged, investing in the stock market, or having babies, and thinking “those people are real adults, and I am just pretending”. I so often feel like a failure in comparison, but you know what helps? Remembering the feeling of standing in front of that middle school classroom, and holding onto the feeling of being the grownup in the room.
See, middle schoolers (middle school grace included) don’t even know enough about the world to be impressed by all the picky pieces, the insurance and the taxes. They only see the big things, the important things — I am independent, I have self control, I can problem-solve. In their eyes I check all the grownup boxes.
To conclude this ramble I’m going to give you a free piece of teaching advice, the most important thing those middle schoolers taught me: If you walk into a classroom knowing that you are the adult in the room and absolutely expecting that children will listen to you… They will.
Based solely on this observation, my developing hypothesis is that adulthood is much more a state of mind than a set of skills. The question, of course, is which comes first?
I am fully confident that by the time I have an answer to that question I will be a real adult.
xoxo,
