For most of my life, I took things for granted- even people. Ever since I was young, people had always told me that I was smart, diligent, and sweet. Being a little kid, I believed every word. And those comments probably were partially true, because I had a lot of friends. They just came naturally. I was always the best, the right one, the one that everyone liked.

When I began middle school, everything was the same. I had the highest score for the math competition, and I had the highest averages. All my friends from fifth grade were still by me, ready to accept me into their conversations whenever I came by. I was best friends with the next smartest girl, and I was proud of it. There was no reason for me to not be. I had literally everything I could ask from a school life!

But as the year wore on, I felt a bit distant from my friends. They weren’t telling me secrets like they had used to. I wasn’t their first choice for a partner in class activities. I felt awkward around some of them. Sure, I still had a few that stuck by me, but I felt as if the rest had fallen out. And soon enough, I had something to really worry about- the “friends” who had fallen out had made a new group, and I was left with a much smaller group of friends. Looking around me, I realized I no longer had people to confide in or share jokes with. My best friend was long gone, too. It was just that I, wound up in everything, hadn’t read the signs of my friends gradually growing distant from me. At that time, I felt so alone- it was as if I didn’t know anyone in school anymore. I knew there had been something wrong with me, and things were going to get worse if I didn’t change. If not, I could eventually end up like one of those kids that nobody talked to and sat alone during lunch.

My first realization was about my lack of modesty. Thinking about my typical actions now and how I acted in fourth grade, I was astounded by the difference. Maybe it was because middle school’s test scores were so much more important that elementary school’s scores. Kids were more sensitive, and I had to control myself. I stopped sharing my good scores. If kids asked, I told them simply whether I had gotten a “okay” or a “bad” score. Kids seemed to like the word “okay” a lot better than “good.”

The second thing that I knew I had to change was how I treated people. It may sound cliché, but I learned to think before I speak. I began to see how I had often hurt my friends’ feelings about their sensitive grades, or some things that they hadn’t known. When I felt offended when someone exclaimed, “You didn’t know that?”, I consoled myself by telling myself that my friends had felt the same way when I had said those words to them. In groups, I needed to learn to respect others’ ideas and such. Never in my life had I realized that the classroom rules of “respect your peers” would in any way affect me- I had been securing myself with my false identity of a “nice person” while I had actually changed to become the opposite. And true enough, the “respect your peers” rule worked out very well. I had some trouble agreeing and going along with what my group members wanted to do in group projects in the beginning. However, as time went on, I learned to work with all sorts of people, and best of all, make any plan work. Before, my brain sort of filtered out whatever the so-called “dumb kids” said. But now, I tried to listen to and understand what they were talking about. Often, their ideas were pretty good, and I agreed to follow through with the idea. We always faced some problems, which was rare when I had used my ideas in the past, but I tried to make everything work. I split up parts to let my groupmates all enjoy contributing to the project. I didn’t force any work onto them, nor did I take over the project. I learned to balance things out. In time, it became my specialty- to be able to work with anyone, which was a pretty rare ability in my grade. While groups around us ended up as failures after too much disagreement, my groups almost always ended well. Not only did that ability give me good grades, I made new friends. Those “dumb kids” and their friends that I had distanced myself from all my life became my friends. Maybe not best friends, but they were close enough that they would say hi to me in the hallways if they saw me.

Like that, I slowly “rebuilt” my place in the school society. My talent at working with anyone worked with my “former friends”, the ones that had fallen out of my circle. Most of them liked my changed self. I became so much closer to the ones that I really trusted, and they all came back to me, except for the few that I had developed bad relations with. Although I had lost my original best friend, I had more trustworthy friends and a new best friend. Sophie was the one that had stuck by me through everything. In so many ways, she was better as a friend than my original best friend. I don’t remember sharing secrets with my original best friend, but I tell Sophie literally everything, from the latest gossips to reasons why I hate some people. She tells me everything too, including the occasional lame joke that we have a good laugh over. We often share grades, but I’m careful not to brag, and so is she. Even if we do brag about something, we’re happy for each other- something I didn’t experience with my old best friend. Sophie and all my friends who had come back to me are friends to stay. Though I’ve realized that not all “friends” are true friends worth keeping, I’ve definitely learned that the only way to have a good friend is to be a good friend.