Advice

Here's the place to go if you need some assistance on topics like bullying, friendships, dating, and more!

Middle School Dating

by Evelyn

Inside LASOTA

What seems to bypass middle school students are the many heartbreaks that cast upon this school are actions that are caused within ourselves. These relationships that form from buds of nostalgia and waves of self-consciousness that we soon won’t recognize in ourselves until we finally understand what loving ourselves really means. What does it mean to love ourselves? It means to finally be able to appreciate the quirks and kinks.

Many middle school students get involved in relationships because they feel the need to get the attention from their partner. To feel as if they’re important, too feel the warm tingly feeling and sweaty hands on a first date. This is okay, dating is okay, but ask yourself honestly, what is the point of dating? Any relationship that you have right now will be forgotten and swallowed into a black hole called growing up. It’s about finally realizing that you don’t need someone to make you happy, on the contrary, dating comes with puddles of tears in the palm of your hands. Sometimes you will wake up In the middle of the night and question if dating is even worth going through.

A couple of months ago, I stood back and watched a relationship unfold right in front of me. It was subtle and an ongoing thing between one of my friends. It kind of reminded me of this twisted origami activity. It made creases that are now permanent, no matter how many times you try to unfold the paper. I still talk to the girl today and she tells me how regretful she feels, how she could go back in time and fix everything if she could. If you don’t have a date to the dance or just a date in general, your life isn’t over. Enjoy the friends you have and make the memories that you may never be able to recreate.

Organization Time!

by Kerrington

Inside LASOTA

You know how your parents complain and complain about how you’re not keeping up with your school work or how you are disorganized? Well you don’t have to worry about that anymore because I ‘m going to give you a couple of tips on how to keep up with you school belongings and how to keep your locker clean.

Let’s start with a multi-compartment bookbag. This is very essential part in the school year. You need this because of the different sections and it is big enough for your all of your school supplies. As long as you keep your things neat inside your bookbag then everything will be okay.

Next is your planner. Your planner is the main thing you need when you are in school. This is where you can write down your homework and remind yourself what your need to do for school like rehearsals, performances, homework, and tutoring.

Now let’s get to our main school supplies. First thing you need is binders for each class to keep yourself organized. For every one class, you will need to put your belongs in the binder. For pens and pencils, you will need to stay stocked up on them. I prefer mechanical pencils and black or blue ball-point pens but if you prefer others then go at it. You will also need a plastic folder for your information for your parents and projects for school. This way, everything is easily accessible and organized!

Bully or Bust

by Haley

Inside LASOTA

Many people are bullied in school in many different forms and for many different reasons. The best way to handle being bullied is to tell someone. Tell someone what people are doing or saying about you. The worst possible thing you could do is keep it to yourself. Tell someone you can trust, like your parents, family friend, or even a teacher you trust.

There are many different forms of bullying; there is cyberbullying which is when people are bullying you over the internet or social media. There is physical bullying which is when the bully is hitting, kicking, or doing something to physically hurt you. The next type of bullying is verbal. Verbal bullying is when someone is spreading bad rumors and name calling.

Bullying is horrible and it’s even worst having to go through it alone. When you’re being bullied it can because you to shut people out, have anxiety, depression, self-harm and it can even cause you to commit suicide. 90% of the time when you are being bullied, it’s not because of you. The bully usually has some kind of problem such as the following: social issues, feeling left out, family issues, anger issues, jealously, having no friends, or just being very unhappy.

The most popular form of bullying is cyberbullying. I believe that cyberbullying is the most popular because the bully can hide behind a computer. It also seems like there is more you could do with it. The bully could make a hate page which is when they could post bad things about the person or make the page and act like the victim, which could ruin the victim’s reputation or social life.

Bullying is a terrible thing that should never happen but sadly, it does. If you are being bullied, please, tell someone; you should not have to go through this alone. If you are bullying someone then please stop and deal with your problems in a different way and find something else to do. Bullying is a horrible thing that should be stopped.

Some advice on Friendships

by Keri

Inside LASOTA

Friendships don’t determine who you are but it does shape who you want to become. In middle school nothing seems more important than having friends to be by your side 24/7. Having friends is a privilege that most people would love to be given. To have someone who won’t judge you through your hard times and someone who will always be there with you to create never ending memories of good and bad. I’m very lucky to have the friendship between me and my two best friends.

The three of us are extremely close and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for them. I’ve been through so much with them including normal girl drama. My advice to you if you’re ever caught between your best friends drama is to just be there for them when they need a shoulder to cry on. Don’t purposely get involved in the situation because the blame could be put on you for just trying to help. If you do happen to get into the drama just remember to not hold any secrets back because the more being held the more the drama is being stirred. Everything in the end will eventually work out.

When fighting with your friends no matter what happened you’ll always miss having gossip sessions and relationship talks with them like you usually do every day. Best friends are like the really close sibling relationships that everyone wants. Friends make life a million times better. If you are struggling to make friends just pick the nicest person in you class and say “hello” because nothing can go wrong with a simple nice sweet “hello.”

Self-control: How to not “pop your top”

by Adrianna

Inside LASOTA

It’s a beautiful day at LaVilla School of the arts, the skies are blue, the weather is fine, but you’re feeling a little under the weather. Your hands are balled up, your teeth clenched and you’re sweating bullets to keep from kicking something. You aren’t sick from a cold; you’re sick with anger but it was all because of one person. You let one person anger you to your wits end and make you throw a fit, pull your hair, punch a wall, and use obscenity? You need some self-control.

What’s self-control you ask? In my opinion, it’s what keeps you calm when someone does something to push your buttons, like the keep peacemaker of your conscience. Even though keeping calm during altercations is a difficult practice to inherit, everyone needs it at times to control yourself from doing something you might regret. It doesn’t matter if you’re stressed, upset, or anxious, every now and then you have to calm down or otherwise, you’ll become overwhelmed.

Now you know what self-control is but, you need to know why self-control is a necessity. “It’s simple, you don’t want to go overboard,” states Don’Neisha McFadden, a student at LaVilla “You could just one day explode over one little petty thing instead of walking away and calming yourself.” Also, it's important to teach yourself this skill because you'll be able to cope with unreasonable situations.

The next thing you want to know is what some reasons to be calm in situations are. A great deal of your decisions is informed by your emotional responses. Which means that if you’re upset your thoughts are clustered and you could do something you didn’t mean or want to do. Also if you think people won’t think of you differently because of the altercation you had with a friend last week, they do.

“Of course the level of self-control you have affects people’s persona of you,” says Kenya Thompson, another student of LaVilla, “If you can’t handle yourself, you could be named as a reckless and wild person.” But finally, “with more self- control people were also more likely to be happy,” states theatlantic.com, an online newspaper.

There are many methods to help you calm down in an altercations. “You could breathe and isolate yourself,” says Thompson, but that’s not all you could do. You can also:

Massage your shoulders and/or temples
Walk away from the situation
Drink a glass of water
Distract yourself
Spend time evaluating the situation
Meditate or pray about it and many more things.

The main thing is to try to calm yourself, but after using these tips and you’re still upset you may have Intermittent Explosive disorder.” Intermittent explosive disorder involves repeated episodes of impulsive, aggressive, violent behavior or angry verbal outbursts in which you react grossly out of proportion to the situation. “states mayoclinic.org. If you think you may have I.E.D. you can talk to a doctor to treat you for prescriptions or go to psychotherapy for your aggressive pulses. Your main priority in an altercation is to not “pop your top”.

So now the next time you’re in the altercation: will it end with a combat or a calm conversation? You decide with your enlightenment of self-control.