I started getting really interested in comedy when I was in middle school.
Abbi Jacobson
I definitely started to perform a little bit in middle school, but not the typical musical/play route. I think that I am funny, but it was more of a social thing, where that was my part in my circle of friends.
My middle school years were defined by memorizing every single word off 'License to Ill' and 'Paul's Boutique.'
Adam F. Goldberg
When I was at the end of middle school and the beginning of high school, I fell in love with hockey in a serious way.
In middle school, I really didn't have music, but in high school, I remember taking a lot of choir and drama.
Adam Lambert
McCain is the kid who was really cool in middle school but never got high school game and people are sick of him acting like he's still popular.
Adam McKay
I was a religious 'SNL' watcher all through middle school. I was obsessed with Molly Shannon, Ana Gasteyer, Cheri Oteri - they were on right when I found the show. Then I started watching the older episodes, and it just totally blew my mind that my dream show already existed.
Aidy Bryant
I went to private school for two years, then Aptos Middle School, and I finished at McAteer. Several of my classmates at those schools are my friends today.
Aisha Tyler
My fascination with women's clothes began very early. My mother was a very fashionable woman. She also made her own clothes. She had these fashion magazines, and I would draw the women in them. My middle school art teacher suggested that I have a fashion drawing show.
Alexander Chee
My first summer in college, I interned for Arena Stage in D.C. and taught a disastrous class on standup comedy to middle schoolers at the Arena Stage camp. I had never taught anything before, and needless to say, I quickly lost control of the class.
Alexandra Petri
I read '13 Reasons Why' in middle school, and the message of the book stuck with me: to treat people better because you never know what they're going through.
Alisha Boe
I finally chopped off my ponytail at the end of middle school, and it was the best decision I made.
Amber Liu
Middle school was my most awkward stage. I switched schools after the sixth grade after having gone to the same school for six years with the same group of 40 kids. It was a shock. I reinvented myself. I experimented with different styles, different groups of friends, and different types of music and not knowing how to be cool.
Amber Stevens
I felt like an outsider in middle school. Horrible.
Amine
I've only ever been in one band in my life, and that was in middle school.
Anderson East
Being able to be one of the headline bands on Warped Tour was a dream I had since I was in middle school.
Andy Biersack
Childhood is generally far too early to know what we want to be when we grow up. Longitudinal studies following thousands of people across time have shown that most people only begin to gravitate toward certain vocational interests, and away from others, around middle school.
Angela Duckworth
One of the challenges of commencement speeches is that you have this older, wiser person who is accomplished talking to young, not-yet-so-wise, not-yet-accomplished adults or, in high school or middle school, even younger.
Most teachers, when surveyed, say that it is part of their job to help students develop things like grit. This is especially true at the elementary and middle school levels. They feel it's part of their vocation to teach other things that are not formally academic content.
If anything, we should feel sorry for the people who want us to feel bad about ourselves, because they are the ones struggling for approval. In middle school, bullies tortured other kids because they thought it would make people like them more.
Ariana Grande
I can't stress to you enough how much I can relate to teens being cyberbullied. Something that helps me is looking at old videos of me and my friends from middle school, or videos of my family. I love watching funny videos of my favorite people - it really cheers me up.
New Kids On The Block were never my thing; my middle school crush was on Rob Van Winkle.
I listened to a lot of No Doubt stuff when I was in high school - or maybe it was middle school... I don't want to age myself too much!
I was bullied in elementary to middle school. It messed with my self esteem.
I remember, in middle school, we did the musical 'Oliver.' I loved the movie, and I always wanted to play Oliver. It might not have been stated, but the boys auditioned for Oliver, and the girls auditioned for Nancy. But we also did a play called 'Li'l Abner,' and I was really excited that they let me put on a suit and a fake mustache.
All through my life, I was hated on. When I was in middle school, they used to write in my rhyme book, 'You suck' or 'This sucks.'
I haven't watched Miss America since I was in middle school, and I was incredulous even then.
Beginning in middle school, the era of wide-margined, Bible-paged anthologies, short stories develop unpromising associations - and these associations often linger through college, when stories become the things distributed in Xeroxes missing entire pages of line-endings.
My dad dropped out of school in middle school, but he reads five or six books a week, and my mom reads about two.
I had a band when I was in middle school, but I was the drummer. I kind of thought if I was going to be in a band, I'd be the drummer. I'm innately drawn to rhythm. But we didn't have any shows. We just jammed in our parents' basement.
I played trumpet in middle school, and then I had to get braces, so I had to stop playing trumpet and start playing drums.
My first love of jazz came from joining the Chilliwack Middle School band - it was like an 18-piece jazz band, and I wanted to join just because the older kids looked like they were having so much fun.
I know from my own personal experience. I was bullied in middle school and high school and went through my fair share of hard times thereafter. Also, one of my really good friends committed suicide when I was in high school.
I definitely think being a young girl, there's a time where - like when you're in middle school or when you first start liking boys - you don't really feel comfortable. You remember that time when you first got your period, or when your boobs started coming in, that you were like, 'This is weird.' You have to grow into yourself.
I've never progressed very far from my days as a smart aleck in middle school.
When I was in middle school, I loved Egyptian mythology.
I think I'm like that nerdy dad from middle school who always has a video camera, but in the same respect, I only take it out during interesting occasions.
I was voted funniest person in my middle-school yearbook. So I guess I was funny in middle school?
In our era of zero tolerance, I would surely have spent most of elementary and middle school shuttling between suspensions and expulsions, with an occasional time out for social studies.
I still remember sitting in my parent's basement playing 'Final Fantasy VII' in middle school. When Sephiroth came down like LeBron James on Aerith with that sword, I couldn't talk for a full 20 minutes.
I played one year of competitive basketball, actually. I don't remember what grade I was in, maybe middle school or something. I was the point guard - I was the smallest one always. I did my best; I thought I did pretty good. I was always a little bit better at soccer, so I had to make the decision.
I've always been into things like exploring and science on the frontiers. I had pictures of space up in my room way back in middle school, right next to the boy band posters!
I had been doing all my school plays, elementary school, middle school, and high school, and then summer. I'd wanted to act for a long time, and I thought I was going to go to college and do theater, go that route. But 'Superbad' kind of fell on my lap. I was very, very lucky for that.
Once your kid reaches middle school, parents are really supposed to fade out of the social picture. Kids are supposed to make their own plans, keep up with sophisticatedly crude discussions, and be able to go out on their own without supervision.
My first taste of theater was my middle school play. We did 'The Jungle Book.' I auditioned for Mowgli, which I didn't get. I ended up playing a part as one of the monkeys.
I was going to middle school in Berkley, and I did not fit in at all. Like a lot of kids, I found theater to be a good place for me.
I started rapping towards the end of middle school. In high school, with a lot of my friends, we would make beats and just start rapping - beating on the wall, beating on the table and freestyling.
Middle school left some scars, as I'm sure it did for many of us. When my body started to change, I felt a bit like I was living inside a stranger. People began responding to me differently, which was confusing.
The successes of the LGBT civil rights movement and the more prominent role openly gay people are playing in the public eye has actually turned up the temperature in middle schools and high schools for queer kids.
You want to help gay kids, you have to reach them in middle school and high school, when they're being bullied.
