Quotes & Sayings About Eighth Grade

I'd always assumed Beth and I would be friends forever. But then in middle of the eighth grade, the Goldbergs went through the World's Nastiest Divorce.
Beth went a little nuts.
I don't blame her. When her dad got involved with this twenty-one year old dental hygienist, Beth got involved with the junk food aisle at the grocery store. She carried processed snack cakes the way toddlers carry teddy bears. She gained, like, twenty pounds, but I didn't think it was a big deal. I figured she'd get back to her usual weight once the shock wore off.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the only person who noticed.
May 14 was 'Fun and Fit Day at Surry Middle School, so the gym was full of booths set up by local health clubs and doctors and dentists and sports leagues, all trying to entice us to not end up as couch potatoes. That part was fine. What wasn't fine was when the whole school sat down to watch the eighth-grade cheerleaders' program on physical fitness. — Katie Alender

On My Eighth-Grade Graduation Ceremony They're celebrating you graduating from eighth grade? We just went to your sixth-grade graduation two goddamned years ago! Jesus Christ, why don't they just throw a fucking party every time you properly wipe your ass? — Justin Halpern

I never believed in pushing my kids. My dad was very unhappy I wasn't going to be a doctor, but I couldn't stand to see the sight of blood. And I wanted to be a lawyer since I was in seventh or eighth grade. — Jerry Reinsdorf

My eighth-grade year, I was home-schooled. I'd basically wake up, go to the gym in the morning, do a little bit of school, go to practice, do a little more school, then go back to practice. My mom had a crockpot and a mini traveling oven, so we'd be cooking and eating dinners at the gym. — Jacob Dalton

People say that rape is not sex, that it's violence," Lucy says, bitterly. "But it's also sex. You can't get around that," she says. "he didn't run me over with a car. He had sex with me. You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to have sex with an eighth-grader. You're not supposed to have sex when you're in eighth grade. It was very intimate. You can't get around it. This part of the body," she says, gesturing from her heart to her lower abdomen, though I understand she means to indicate her vagina. "If you're sitting around with a group of women, talking about various traumas, someone will say, I got beaten by my mother. But if you say, I got raped, it's a different thing."
I wonder if that is true. Is rape really the worst sort of violation? I'm not sure. I often wonder why it matters whether we're penetrated or not. There is the pain, but the pain doesn't last. The shame does. (216) — Jessica Stern

I had been writing fiction since I was in eighth grade, because I loved it. — Thomas Perry

One out of every four. I have repeated this statistic over and over and still cannot fathom the depth of what it really means. One out of every four girls is sexually abused before the age of eighteen. For boys, the number is one out of six.9 This means one out of every four women at the grocery store, at the bank, at the mall, in the pew at church, and everywhere in "normal" life have had this traumatic experience. For me as a teacher, this means that one out of every four of my precious eighth grade girls will, before they graduate from high school, become one of those victims. — Mary Frances Bowley

California is the highest-tax state in the nation and has been for a long time. It has the highest-paid teachers in the nation, by far - $400 a month more than New Jersey - and yet California is the third lowest state on test scores for fourth and eighth grade English and math in the nation, and has been at the low level for a long, long time. — Arthur Laffer

I really, really like Suzana Delgado, who is the most beautiful girl in the eighth grade and probably the world. She has like 183 million Instagram followers. — Dave Barry

My dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch, and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd. — Dave Brubeck

If you thought eighth grade was tough, try it with fangs and a fear of garlic. — Heather Brewer

The dilemma of the eighth-grade dance is that boys and girls use music in different ways. Girls enjoy music they can dance to, music with strong vocals and catchy melodies. Boys, on the other hand, enjoy music they can improve by making up filthy new lyrics. — Rob Sheffield

Your daughter went to bed on the eve of her thirteenth birthday as a sweetheart, and woke up the next morning a bitch. You never stopped loving her, but goddamn, you had a lot of days when you didn't like her. At all. Eighth grade to sophomore year, Alex often referred to Deane as "the exchange student. — Suanne Laqueur

Marriage and fatherhood heighten the disillusion that we all think we are born handy. We confidently believe that we can fix things around the house, as if it's part of the collective brain that was further enhanced by eighth-grade shop class. — Bob Newhart

The day my mother gave us the keys, she also made me and Greta sign a form so that the bank knew our signatures. To get in we had to show our key and sign something so they would know it was really us. I was worried that my signature wouldn't look the same. I wasn't sure when that thing would happen that made it so you always signed your name exactly the same, but it hadn't happened to me yet. So far I'd only had to sign something three times. Once for a code of conduct for the eighth grade field trip to Philadelphia, once for a pact I made with Beans and Frances Wykoski in fifth grade that we'd never have boyfriends until high school. (Of the three of us, I'm the only one who kept that pact.) — Carol Rifka Brunt

My only foray into anything stock-market-related was in my eighth grade social studies class. I have steered clear ever since. — Rich Sommer

I felt a mix of wanting to kill him and wanting to kiss him at the same time. When I thought of what true love must be like, I figured it must be like this, and not the stupid eighth grade infatuation most girls my age felt. True love includes an equal part of good and bad, but true sticks around and doesn't run off to Vegas with a podiatrist. — A.S. King

I was in eighth grade when I did my first Junior Theatre show. I was in 'Annie Get Your Gun' as a dancing Indian. — Casey Nicholaw

Wow, Carter. You've got a HUGE wiener.
Suddenly, Gavin being in the bathroom with me didn't seem so bad. If only he could have been in the
bathroom with me in eighth grade and passed that little tidbit around for Penny Frankles to hear, I might
not have gone to the eight grade graduation dance solo.
I finished pissing, zipped up my pants and flushed the toilet, all while trying not to pat myself on the
back. Yeah, I had a huge wiener. You bet your sweet ass I did. I almost needed a wheelbarrow to carry it
around. And because a toddler said it, it must have been true.
We got back to the table and I couldn't keep the shit-eating grin off of my face. — Tara Sivec

It was an intensely lonely moment, like all of eighth grade condensed into one claustrophobic second. — Lisa Rowe Fraustino

Most individuals on earth are not drawn to the higher light at this time. That doesn't make you superior to anyone else. If you are in the eighth grade you're not better than someone who is in the fourth grade. — Frederick Lenz

So you want to tell me what a sixth grader was doing in the eighth-grade side of the locker room, in a eighth-grade fight?" he said.
"Winning," I said. — Gary D. Schmidt

I pick up the list of Benji's five favorite books because we've got work to do:

"Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. He's a pretentious fuck and a liar.

"Underworld" by Don DeLillo. He's a snob.

"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. He's a spoiled passport-carrying fuck stunted in eighth grade.

"Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace. Enough already.

"The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane. He's got Mayflowers in his blood. — Caroline Kepnes

Some years ago I read a book that brought Einstein's theory of relativity down to an eighth grade level. This convinced me that any subject can be made easy. In other words, always beware of anyone who tells you a topic is above you or better left to experts. This person may, for some reason, be trying to shut you out. You CAN understand almost anything. — Richard J. Maybury

My eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Pabst, had done her master's thesis on Tolkien. She showed me how the trilogy was patterned after Norse mythology. She was also the first person to encourage me to submit stories for publication. The idea of writing a fantasy based on myths never left me, and many years later, this would lead me to write Percy Jackson. — Rick Riordan

I've been playing baseball since I was 5 or 6 years old. I've been on a schedule, pretty much, since I was in eighth, ninth grade. I look forward to not doing that. — Derek Jeter

I remember one English teacher in the eighth grade, Florence Schrack, whose husband also taught at the high school. I thought what she said made sense, and she parsed sentences on the blackboard and gave me, I'd like to think, some sense of English grammar and that there is a grammar, that those commas serve a purpose and that a sentence has a logic, that you can break it down. I've tried not to forget those lessons, and to treat the English language with respect as a kind of intricate tool. — John Updike

There are some things, like your eighth grade boyfriend kissing some other girl at a middle school dance, that are easy to forgive. And there are some things that are just unforgivable. — Jennifer Mathieu

My mother's dad dropped out of the eighth grade to work. He had to. By the time he was 30, he was a master electrician, plumber, carpenter, mason, mechanic. That guy was, to me, a magician. Anything that was broken, he could fix. Anybody anywhere in our community knew that if there was a problem, Carl was there to fix it. — Mike Rowe

I would never be popular. I didn't want to be; I liked being shy. I'd never be the smartest or the hottest or the happiest. By eighth grade you start to figure out your limits. — Laurie Halse Anderson

She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything. — Flannery O'Connor

Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed
guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible. — Richard Russo

I almost flunked first grade and also the second, third, forth, and fifth; but my younger brother was in the grade behind me and he was a brain and nobody wanted to have me be in the same grade as him, so they kept passing me. I never learned how to spell, graduated from eighth grade counting on my fingers to do simple addition, and in general was not a resounding academic success. — Robert Munsch

Matthew hereby declares that Katherine Galloway is retroactively responsible for all embarrassing and painful incidents that have occurred in his life to date. Including, but not limited to, that time he broke his own nose with a tennis racket in eighth grade. KATHERINE'S FAULT. — Lauren James

Don't go to eighth grade ... don't talk about something old ... don't bring up old memories that have nothing to do with who we are now. THIS is all that matters! TODAY. — Brad Meltzer

I was on the junior team when I was a freshman, that's how good I was. But I wasn't on my eighth-grade team, because some coach - some Grammy, some reviewer, some fashion person, some blah blah blah - they're all the same as that coach. — Kanye West

When I was in the eighth grade, I wrote this huge long paper about how I had no idea what I was gonna do with my life, but that I wanted to make a difference and touch even if it was like one person's life ... inspire them. — Shantel VanSanten

My dad had an eighth grade education, and everything that he did in his life was just stuff that he went out and did - figured out what he needed to know and read. Very successful, a union contractor. — Mitch Pileggi

Why can't we repeat 8th grace five times and call that a high school education? — Audrey Regan

I was always a clown. In the eighth grade I won a city speech contest by doing an Eddie Murphy routine. I'm no good at public speaking, but if I can assume a role and speak as that person, then I'm fine. When I had to give a book report, I always did it in character. — Jason Wiles

I lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, until eighth grade, and then my high-school years were in Rochester, New York. — Kristen Wiig

My mother had been a grade-school teacher, and my father had an eighth-grade education. — Gordon Bell

The lying started in the eighth grade. Possibly it had begun earlier, and I simply hadn't noticed. — Anita Shreve

What was your job back on Earth? I've always been curious. I taught eighth-grade math in Tallahassee. Huh, I said. That's not what I expected. Are you kidding? Powell said back. You try teaching algebra to a bunch of little shitheads for thirty-eight years straight. The way I figure it I've got about another decade before my rage from that gets entirely burned up. — John Scalzi

My first incident drinking alcohol occurred after a 2-month period in which I stole wine coolers and beers from my parents and hid them in different places around my room. I was 14 years old, in eighth grade. I invited a friend over one night after I had stolen enough. After 2 wine coolers the friend interrupted me, saying, "Hold on," and vomited into a trash can. I vomited a lot into the toilet. The next day, like a dumbass, I put the empty wine cooler and beer bottles in our outside garbage bin without trying to cover them. My dad caught me as a result, but hid it from my mom for unknown reasons. — Brandon Scott Gorrell

In the eighth American-educational grade, Bruce Green fell dreadfully in love with a classmate who had the unlikely name of Mildred Bonk. The name was unlikely because if ever an eighth-grader looked like a Daphne Christianson or a Kimberly St.-Simone or something like that, it was Mildred Bonk. — David Foster Wallace

For someone like me who's lived in the same place her whole life - I mean, I lived three blocks from where I was born, and I met my future husband in the eighth grade - there are always family stories and legends passed down. — Susan Straight

You look ridiculous," Wren said.
"What?"
"That shirt." It was a Hello Kitty shirt from eighth or ninth grade. Hello Kitty dressed as a superhero. It said SUPER CAT on the back, and Wren had added an H with fabric paint. The shirt was cropped too short to begin with, and it didn't really fit anymore. Cath pulled it down self-consciously.
"Cath!" her dad shouted from downstairs. "Phone."
Cath picked up her cell phone and looked at it
"He must mean the house phone," Wren said.
"Who calls the house phone?"
"Probably 2005. I think it wants its shirt back. — Rainbow Rowell

My girlfriend in eighth grade had been asking her friends when I was going to kiss her. At a dance, my buddy said, 'You better do it now!' I went in for it. I felt like the coolest person on the face of the earth. A week or two later, she broke up with me. — Michael Rady

I wasn't athletic as a kid, and I was self-conscious about my body, but then in eighth grade I won a school contest, and the prize was a bunch of personal training sessions. — Matt McGorry

"Remember that time you dumped out a whole box of bait?"
I almost smile. It was the summer before eighth grade. Dad bought crickets at the bait shop. "They were screaming for help." — A.G. Howard

I could hear music playing in the background of works by certain authors, like Poe and Shakespeare. And I discovered Nikki Giovanni when I was in eighth grade. Her writing has a musical energy with pulse and rhythm, almost like jazz or hip-hop. — Jill Scott

I'm blessed because I had my mom as a teacher - sixth through eighth grade - and she is one of the best teachers I've ever had. — Bellamy Young

Until the Left took over American public education in the second half of the 20th century, it was generally excellent - look at the high level of eighth-grade exams from early in the 20th century and you will weep. The more money the Left has gotten for education - America now spends more per student than any country in the world - the worse the academic results. And the Left has removed God and dress codes from schools - with socially disastrous results. — Dennis Prager

The Anne Rice books are a lot about infection. I read "Interview With the Vampire" a million times when I was in seventh and eighth grade. Also, [writing Gavriel's backstory] definitely came from those books: I sat down and reread them all and thought a lot about ... the way in which vampirism is pushing away from humanity in interesting ways, and creating something new from humanity. I imprinted on those books pretty hard.
Tanith Lee's "Sabella or the Blood Stone" was a big inspiration. I absolutely loved her books; when I was a kid, I wrote many bad Tanith Lee pastiches. Susie McKee Charnas' "The Vampire Tapestry." Poppy Z. Brite's "Lost Souls." Nancy Collins' "Sunglasses After Dark," which sounds like the most '80s title ever. It's about a vampire named Sonja Blue, and she goes around killing vampires. She's the only vampire who's half-alive. It's a really fun, blood-filled romp. It's very "Blade" before "Blade"
with a lady. — Holly Black

I'm in the eighth grade and am not the height of the rest of my class. But I don't worry about that. I'm just me! — Bobb'e J. Thompson

I always wanted to be someone in the entertainment industry. In my eighth grade slideshow, when everyone was like "show us what you want to be," everyone [said] doctor, lawyer, [but] mine literally said rapper. I wanted to be a musician, I wanted to be a superstar, I wanted to be on stage, I wanted to perform, I wanted to be in movies. But as you grow up, those dreams kind of fade away. — Lilly Singh

I really love folklore. I had read a lot of faerie folklore that informed the books I wrote. I also really love vampire folklore; my eighth grade research paper was on [it]. [With this project,] it was really helpful to think about the way you can use language. When you're writing about faeries, you can't call anyone "fey"; there are certain words that become forbidden because they're actualized in what faeries do. When you write about vampires, you could think the same way about things like the word "red" or "hunger"
it's interesting to think of the ways that the words have double meanings, or different meanings that shifted. — Holly Black

For the last week or so it's like getting jabbed with a little needle every time I hear that word. Gram is trying to pretend how excited she is I'm finally in the eighth grade, like this is a really big deal. Which is a joke, because the only reason I got passed from seventh grade is because they figured this way the big butthead can be - quote - someone else's problem, thank God, we've had quite enough of Maxwell Kane - unquote. — Rodman Philbrick

We buy them (books) as our budget allows. But eighth grade has four trade books (individual-title books), and you have time to do more than that during the school year. — Bill Vaughan

I wrote my first novel in eighth grade for a boy named Kenny on whom I had an unrequited crush and who sat behind me in social studies. — Kate Christensen

Thank you. There were three of us kids, all right together. I'm the oldest, she was the knee-baby, and my brother Henry came last. Funny, I miss her all the time, but I miss her most when I'm reading Austen. We'd been fans since we were in the seventh and eighth grade, two Creole girls gigglin' about marriage proposals gone bad. Our daddy teased us about reading each other passages during a Fourth of July crawfish boil, so he named the biggest one Mr. Darcy and threw him in the pot." She looked up, a smile fighting the tears in her eyes. "We refused to eat him. — Mary Jane Hathaway

Up until I think eighth grade - when I found out in front of a roomful of people - I believed that England and Great Britain were two entirely different places. Like I didn't know that England was a part of Great Britain. I thought they were completely separate in every way. — Paul F. Tompkins

I think by eighth grade I knew I wanted to be an actor. I'd done church plays and stuff, but my first actual acting class was in eighth grade. I was obsessed with it. — Aaron Paul

I knew I was different when I was about six years of age but I just knew that I wasn't like everybody else. I mean I wasn't like the other kids. I didn't know what that was. But I guess it was when I was in seventh or eighth grade, I'm like, 'Hey, something's wrong here.' — James McGreevey

This girl," I tell Rachel. "That's not what I look like. That's not who I am." I have a feeling Rachel will get this because she pretended to be straight all through high school, even though she figured out she was a lesbian when she was in eighth grade.

I say it again, "That's not me."

Her eyes light up. "Great. Let's see if we can find her. — Jennifer Niven

The sixth grade made my life successful by preparing me for the seventh and the seventh by preparing me for the eighth and so on. May it do the same for you. — Herbert Hoover

I shook myself; I was dreaming. As I went to bed the words of the eighth-grade class's teacher, when the class got to Evangeline , kept echoing in my ears: "We're coming to a long poem now, boys and girls. Now don't be babies and start counting the pages." I lay there like a baby, counting the pages over and over, counting the pages. — Randall Jarrell

I created my MySpace page in eighth grade, because that's how all my friends talked to each other, so I made one, too. Then, all of a sudden, my friends started putting my songs on their profiles, and then their relatives, their friends in different states did. — Taylor Swift

There are too many false things in the world, and I don't want to be a part of them. If you say what you think, you're called cocky or conceited. But if you have an objective in life, you shouldn't be afraid to stand up and say it. In the second grade, they asked us what we wanted to be. I said I wanted to be a ball player and they laughed. In the eighth grade, they asked the same question, and I said a ball player and they laughed a little more. By the eleventh grade, no one was laughing. — Johnny Bench

I kind of fell into acting, but I have sung and trained since I was in the eighth grade. — Tia Carrere

I was a very, very serious child ... I was valedictorian of my kindergarten and eighth-grade class. — Christine Lavin

I SPENT EIGHT YEARS at Blessed Sacrament School, far more than half my life by the time the last bell of eighth grade rang. Ted Shaw, a high school friend who later became the legal director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, describes Catholic school as his salvation and damnation: it shaped his future and terrified his heart. I identify with this depiction. The Sisters of Charity helped to shape who I am, but there was much that I wouldn't be sad to leave behind. — Sonia Sotomayor

I played football in eighth grade, and even though I had a passion for it, it turned out I'm no good at playing it. — Ross Mathews

The books we read change over the years as new books come out and they change over the grades. Books we are reading in fifth and sixth grade now may have been seventh and eighth grade books in the past, or the other way around. — Brian J. White

When I was in eighth grade, I used a self-timing camera to take nude pictures of myself in various stages of erection. I then exchanged my biology teacher's slides with the images. The teacher, in a state of panic, kept rapidly pressing the 'next' button. It was like a pornographic flip-book. That was the last straw in a very heavy pile of straws. I was expelled, and I ended up transferring mid-year from boarding school to a public school near home. — Dani Alexander

When I was in school, in eighth grade, someone recognized something in me. She was an English teacher, and we read a play out loud in class, and she asked me to read one of the roles. I'd never done anything like that before, but something just lit up. — David Morse

I have been an Avengers fan since the middle 1960s. I grew up with them, and I've imagined a hundred different versions of an Avengers movie. I think I even have a script I wrote back in eighth grade, 'Avengers vs. the Mole Man.' Truly dreadful, but a work of love. — Jonathan Maberry

Jeremy said you've been friends since third grade. I wouldn't know. We didn't have a class together until eighth, when you did have a crush on me."

"No, I didn't!" she lied.

"Yeah, you did. Your face turned bright red every time I looked at you--kind of like it is right now. — Elle Todd

In seventh and eighth grade, grammar and vocabulary were not my favorite subjects. — Aaron Lazar

I've loved vampires for a very long time. In eighth grade, I guess, my research paper was on vampires. — Holly Black

Back in eighth grade, I'd seen nothing but small-town Georgia when I left the U.S. for the first time and went to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China. — Chandler Massey

I grew up in Del Mar, Calif., north of San Diego. I got my first job the summer after eighth grade at a small Internet service provider. — David Ulevitch

I was very withdrawn and definitely played with dolls well into eighth grade. But I was the oldest of nine, and that grounded me in a way that I don't think I would have been grounded otherwise. So I was able to - or forced to - function practically. But I think, by nature, I was someone who lived in my head, in my imagination. — Susan Sarandon

When we home schooled my oldest, Jasper, in eighth grade, I saw how empowering it is for a child to learn in their own way. That rebooted my thinking about education. — Suzy Amis

Before the eighth grade, I probably went to seven or eight different schools. — Jeremy London

In a 2005 study, for instance, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania analyzed 164 eighth-grade students, measuring their IQs and other factors, including how much willpower the students demonstrated, as measured by tests of their self-discipline. Students who exerted high levels of willpower were more likely to earn higher grades in their classes and gain admission into more selective schools. — Charles Duhigg

In the eighth grade I found I had a voice for opera, so I followed that path a little, but my impulse has always been an actor. I have always liked cinema, and let's face it, opera singers are just bad actors! I didn't want to translate myself in that direction. — Robert Davi

Our culture is definitely the eighth grade. It's run by eighth-grade boys, and the way these boys show a girl they like her is by humiliating her and making her cry. — Merrill Markoe

Around eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a composer and that's what I went to college for. Just a few years back, I switched out of composition and into creative writing so I could work with words. — Joanna Newsom

At the fourth grade level, girls at the same percentages of boys say they're interested in careers in engineering or math or astrophysics, but by eighth grade that has dropped precipitously. — Chelsea Clinton

It's very cool to be short, very cool. When I was in eighth grade, and the height I am now, I would just look at the cute little short girls and think, 'If only, if only.' — Alison McGhee

Everywhere you look, there is a charity or a project in school to get involved in. In eighth grade, there was this program called CJSF, California Junior Scholarship Foundation. We were involved in soup kitchens and toy drives, and your school can set up something like that. If your school doesn't have a program like that, set one up. — Lindsey Shaw

Ryan Chase was my eighth-grade collage, aspirational and wide-eyed. But Max was the first bite of grilled cheese on a snowy day, the easy fit of my favorite jeans, that one old song that made it onto every playlist. Peanut-butter Girl Scout cookies instead of an ornate cake. Not glamorous or idealized or complicated. Just me. — Emery Lord

Bitch power is the juice, the sweat, the blood that keeps pop music going. Rick James helped me understand the lesson of the eighth-grade dance: Bitch power rules the world. If the girls don't like the music, they sit down and stop the show. You gotta have a crowd if you wanna have a show. And the girls are the show. We're talking absolute monarchy, with no rules of succession. Bitch power. She must be obeyed. She must be feared. — Rob Sheffield

Around eighth grade Margot started getting really sensitive about her weight, even though she wasn't remotely fat - just a little round-faced. So Margot did what any normal fourteen-year-old girl would do. She started puking on purpose, every day after fifth period. Of course now, she does more than puke. But we don't talk about that. Because real friends don't judge each other for what they do to survive in hell. — Isobel Irons

We broke up in eighth grade when Tara-Mae Forrester offered to let me touch her boobs. And I did. — Emma Chase

I got interested in astronomy at the age of 8 because I was looking at an atlas of the planets in my parents' apartment in Arlington, where I grew up. I got a telescope at age 10, which is pretty normal, and by the time I was in eighth grade, I had already seen a lot of cheesy sci-fi films. — Seth Shostak

As a result of this "racism smog," many of our children have internalized all of the negative stereotypes inherent in our society's views of black people. A student teacher at Southern University told me that she didn't know what to say when an African American eighth-grade boy came up to her and said, "They made us the slaves because we were dumb, right, Ms. Summers?" Working with a middle schooler on her math, a tutor was admonished, "Why you trying to teach me to multiply, Ms. L.? Black people don't multiply; black people just add and subtract. White people multiply. — Lisa Delpit

I mean, growing up in New Orleans when you're in seventh and eighth grade and you're into music and you're a dorky dude, you know, you listen to the entire Rush catalog and the entire Zeppelin catalog and you go through these, like, phases of classic rock. It definitely speaks to our dorkiness and the similar hometown that we grew up in, the similar sort of schooling we went through and friends we had. — Steve Zissis