As I sadly start my final year here, looking out at the year ahead of me (shoutout to UCAS for inventing the torture of personal statements), I thought perhaps it was time to look back to those core year 7 memories we all have. Maybe these will hit a little close to home for you, but hopefully they prove surprisingly nostalgic. And if you are newly year 7 – I assure you, it’s a rite of passage. I hope you can take comfort in knowing everyone went through this, or at least I did.
So, in true Buzzfeed style, I’ve created an (obscenely long) checklist, complete with my own embarrassing anecdotes sprinkled in.
- Owned a disproportionately large bag. A bonus if it was half the size of you, you could survive 2-3 days in the wild with it, or it had a particularly questionable design you regretted before the year was over (yes, mine was known as the pond weed bag… I’ll leave you to imagine that one for yourselves).
- Ate at Wagamamas at an end of term/half term. At barely 1 minute from school, it is an adventurous choice, and perfect if you want to bump into absolutely everyone.
- Forgot to get your planner signed (and panicked). This anxiety was considerably heightened as we were promised a class reward if everyone actually managed it (spoiler: I cannot recall us ever actually making it).
- Had to sit in an alphabetical seating plan in almost every lesson. Unironically how I made my best friend though…
- Ate lunch with almost your entire year group. Yes, queuing was a legitimate and highly sociable pastime.
- Almost took out a junior school child in your haste to get to the canteen.
- Dropped your lunch tray. Honestly, I wouldn’t wish this fate on anyone. The stairs in the old canteen often took people out. Unfortunately, once I didn’t even manage to make it to the stairs – my lunch was on the floor, right next to the teacher table, on induction day. I really seized the opportunity to make an impression (this memory has haunted me for years).
- Got caught trying to use somebody else’s early lunch pass. For legal reasons I cannot endorse this.
- Consistently ran to the canteen. If you were a year 7 pre-building project, it was a mere sprint across the pit (to where the auditorium is now), and my year used to FLY there come 12:55. Absolute respect to those who make it up the marathon to Hastings now.
- Had a knee length or longer school skirt. You’ve. Got. To. Leave. Growing. Room.
- Played in the hockey C or D team. Rocking up to a sport you had no idea how to play, but actually finding it surprisingly fun, as long as it wasn’t too cold.
- Was either extremely short or extremely tall. A true year 7 is completely conspicuous, and being dwarfed by your rucksack, or alarmingly tall (like me) is the perfect way to achieve this.
- Owned a scrunchie. Enough said.
- Was scared of sixth formers. They looked way too put together (spoiler: we aren’t).
- Thought your end of year exams were the worst thing in the world. Another spoiler: it gets worse.
- Spent way too long on that ‘who am I’ collage for RS. Existential crisis triggered.
- Decorated someone’s locker. Actually, a really fun idea would recommend 10/10.
- Bought Maoams from the post office.
- Decorated and sticky-back-plastic every exercise book.
- Owned way too much stationery. Another bonus if you had to have a separate pencil case for those coloured pens you definitely needed.
- Played with slime in the locker room. Even better if you made it yourself or bought a homemade one from someone else – triggering intense rivalries.
- Found out your harry potter house percentages on Buzzfeed during break.
- Was chilled to your bones after being told off for drinking water in a science lab.
- Added an emoji next to every name in your contacts.
- Had a meltdown about finding exactly 4 people to walk down to Nursery Road with.
- Took selfies with either a peace sign or while sticking your tongue out (or both).
- Got braces and made a questionable choice with the colour of your train track bands.
- Your school photo was so bad that you wish it never saw the light of day. Unfortunately, this is a yearly event for me.
- Was on a year group WhatsApp chat.
- Had said Whatsapp chat promptly (and rather wisely) disbanded by the teachers.
- Sent a lost email.
- Sent a lost email to all pupils. Please don’t (especially if it is about your pencil case or your stylus).
- Sent a lost email to all pupils and all staff. Please, please don’t let this be you.
- Wasted a huge amount of time trying to track down room P. It’s a secret room and you will never find it.
- Made something in art or DT that your parents threw in the bin. I might still have an extremely thick and horribly square spatula I made in DT.
- Heard the fire alarm tester go off during a Friday lunch and you LEAPT out of your seat. Shoutout to my friend who positively ran away, burger still in hand.
- Got asphyxiated by someone spraying extremely strong-smelling deodorant in the locker room.
- Once, before morning registration, you and your friends decided to throw paper aeroplanes across the senior balcony, but that distance is actually pretty far, and at one point you really nearly hit Ms Duncan who just coming out of the staff room below.
- Realised just how bad you looked in the school swim cap.
- Took up an entire corridor with your friends.
- Was traumatised by watching your history teacher chop off the ear of that teddy bear during a historical re-enactment.
- Went to the Kings disco. Bonus points if you gave a boy a Chinese takeaway number.
- Got extremely excited at using a ukelele/glockenspiel/boom whacker in music. The three chords it took to play Riptide on the ukelele were unfortunately too advanced for me.
- Did an MFL speaking exam for the first time. Yes, I did tell my French teacher I never shower (I promise I do)
- And finally, a core memory, you were not ready for the absolute jump scare that was hearing the shouted UNCONQUERED PEAKS part in the school song.
So, there you have it, the highly objective and concrete criteria of whether you were a good year 7. If you related to less than 10, what were you even doing? 20 is passable. But if you found yourself reminiscing over 30+ of these, I am proud of your commitment – you a definitely were a true year 7, congrats.
