Digital Project #1

Brandon Underwood

Sep. 14^th, 2023

Professor DeSpain

CODE 121

Digital Project #1: Moving Forward

Digital Project #1: Moving Forward

Before going into the middle school years of 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade, I will start with 5^th grade and my earliest vivid move. According to recollections from my family, I did move before that, a couple times between states, but I will be sticking to times I, myself, can remember.

My earliest memory of a transition was actually more of a graduation from elementary school to middle school of the same district. At the time, I was about 10~ years old and I was known as the loner type. I passed my classes easily, but my social skills were weak. 

There were two schools that fed into the middle school of the district, so I met new people in middle school and made more than a single friend. The school was called Jason Lee after the founder, it was in a city right next to Seattle, Washington. I lived in a townhouse sitting conveniently between my middle school and elementary school, so I was used to walking. 

I liked that period of my life because it was very stationary compared to the next few years. Sadly, it came to an end when my mother “divorced” (they technically never married) my stepfather. There was a small family of a mother and daughter who lived with us in the townhouse, but they moved out when their funds ran dry, and my mother followed in their steps. 

Halfway through my first year of middle school, we moved across the country. I had to say goodbye to the small foothold I had in the social structures in Jason Lee, and I had to get to know people in my new school district when we moved to my grandmother’s house because money was scarce. 

I spent the rest of 6^th grade in that district. However, it wasn’t without troubles. I had a bad behavior problem and ended up getting kicked out of that school at the end of 6^th grade. I was grounded for basically all of the summer. When 7^th grade came around, I was in an even worse situation. 

We still lived with my grandmother, but now I was getting a ride from my grandmother and my great uncle to a school deeper in Chicago called Ashburn. It was a bittersweet time for me because there were joys along the way like our stop to get milkshakes every couple days or the pop-tarts my great uncle had in his house as we waited. 

The drive to and from school every day was an hour long and I had to get up every morning at unfathomable times. We only chose this school because my grandmother, who was a retired principal, had a connection with the principal who was a friend. My great uncle offered to take over driving my sister and me to school because he worked there as a Special Needs teacher. 

At that school, I finally started to explore my intellectual abilities. I took the MAP test every year, and I got one of the highest marks in the entire school, while only a 7^th grader. 

But this lifestyle was short-lived as my mother drove two hours every day just to get to work. She was saving up money and was showing us different properties where we could move. That summer we moved north to Lake County and lived in a small city called Round Lake. 

I still remember the times my mother said that I was going to have a stable high school life. I wasn’t going to move anymore during those years. I lived in a townhouse again, but this time it was just my mother, sisters, and me. 

It was a middle school called John T. Magee Middle School, Magee for short, and that’s where I finally ended up forming a comfortable relationship with my peers. I still had ties to my loner persona, but I thrived. My grades steadied, and I spent more time exploring my interests. 

It was hard at first because I didn’t let go of the distance I maintain with other people, something I still have to this day. I eventually got a hold of it and had to practically force my way into a clique. I was an 8^th grader by now, and I was still excelling in academics. If I had chosen to take the next level up in math classes, they would have put me on a bus to the high school every day for math classes. 

I started pursuing my career goals in my extracurricular time. But I remained nervous when I went to my 8^th grade graduation and summer came. 

I didn’t maintain contact well with any of the interesting characters I had met in the past, so I spent the summer doing nothing social. 

I changed friend groups when high school came, because just like going into middle school, there were two middle schools that fed into the same high school. I got to know more people from the other school than my own, but I still felt a sense of familiarity. 

It really felt to me like the unstable grounds of middle school passed me. I had the underlying feeling of relief for a long while. I went on to interweave myself into the community further through community service, and I didn’t move again until college came. 

I graduated with honors, and a few other accomplishments. I didn’t have many close friends, only two or three at most, but now I keep in contact with them more than I did before. I even had a romantic relationship during high school. 

I still look back on that middle school turmoil as the cause of my current level of social anxiety and my confidence issues. But those memories remain bittersweet, partly because they have passed and partly because I’m a different person now.