My Journey Through Type One Diabetes

7. How I Handled Middle School

Many things made middle school horrible, first and foremost being my teachers, also having limited friends has never been good for me and being more independent with my type one diabetes did not really help with either of these things.

My teachers were awful, and we had to have the same teachers for three years. Our homerooms changed each year, but each teacher taught a subject or two. My class was also split up into an "A" class and a "B" class which was determined by our math scores because we were taught the same thing except for math. The "A" class was taught more complicated math while the "B" class was taught the normal curriculum, but we all thought this meant we were dumb. I was placed in the "B" class which ended up being good from an academic perspective, but my mental health declined. The reasons it went downhill is because I thought I was an idiot for being in the "dumb" class, I had a hard time making friends, and I got stuck with mostly guys who were troublemakers in the "B" class. Apparently, our teachers would rant about the "B" class to the "A" class! They talked about how slow we were going and how disruptive we were during class. Another teacher was sexist to boys, literally hated all boys and blamed them for everything. The other two dinosaurs (that is what I call teachers who have been teaching too long) were judgmental and once you were labeled as a troublemaker you were blamed for everything even if they did nothing wrong.

Anyway, I could write a whole book on EVERYTHING those teachers did wrong, but I get that not everyone wants to hear about that. Also now looking at this from a perspective as I am studying to become a teacher, it horrifies me that teachers like this still exist in our education system.

The friends I had also caused my mental health to slip. I did have two friends, but we never got together outside of school or at very least they did not invite me. I sat at a lunch table with a few kids they were interesting, to say the least, but I trusted them, and we had fun at lunch and recess. Honestly at this stage of my life I was probably maturing out of the age group that I should relate most to because of my type one diabetes. The most important things that I remember from this time is my schoolwork and diabetes.

When I started middle school, I had just started using my first Dexcom when I still had to do finger pokes for it to have an accurate reading. It was still awesome to have the Dexcom at all though. By my eighth-grade year I had started to "forget" to do my finger pokes but then the Dexcom G6 came along to save me. Now I was doing things mostly independent, I tested my blood sugar by myself, and was able to dose myself for a meal or when my blood sugar was high.

All these factors combined jump started my life to eventually have anxiety. Most time I cannot believe that my anxiety sprouted from middle school, but I look back I see that there is no doubt where my anxiety came from. So yeah, that is basically why middle school was awful along with the other stories I told you in the previous chapters. I will have to talk about middle school one more time before I move onto high school. I survived and I am trying to move past this, but it is really hard to forgive all these people who hurt me.

Author's Note

Chapter started: 5/27/2022 @11:20pm

Chapter ended: 5/30/2022 @1:50am

Hey everyone! Hope you guys are liking what I am writing, let me know what you think.

If you would like, go to the comments and share about a horrible teacher you had and why they were not a great teacher, whether it be bad social skills, just bad at teaching, or maybe bad at controlling a classroom. Let me know it could help me for my future career as a teacher to avoid this bad things.

I know everyone goes through their own challenges with T1D so please no hating on me or anyone else, thanks!