My goal when I got to middle school was to be able to tape a practice or rehearsal schedule up on the fridge next to Tori’s varsity volleyball schedule and Annalise’s concert piano schedule. So, I set out to find my “thing.”

But here are the top ten reasons why that never happened:

1. I hit seven balls over the fence during tennis tryouts and didn’t get one single serve inbounds.

2. I fell doing a cartwheel and twisted my ankle at dance squad auditions.

3. In volleyball tryouts, I never got a single ball over the net but managed to get one spiked in my face.

4. I pulled a muscle trying to kick as high as everyone else at cheerleading tryouts, and Mom had to take me to physical therapy for a month.

5. I tripped on the ball running down the field at soccer tryouts and literally ended up with grass stains on my chin.

6. Trying to qualify for the math decathlon, I didn’t even make it past the first placement test.

7. I hit two people in the head with a giant prop candy cane and knocked over the Styrofoam streetlamp at the holiday showcase auditions.

8. The school nurse had to be called when I landed on the high-jump bar during indoor track tryouts. (I was pretty sure I broke my back, so Mom took me to the urgent care center, but it ended up only being a bad bone bruise.)

9. I whiffed the ball six times at bat during softball tryouts and face-planted trying to catch a grounder.

10. The details of the Spring Fine Arts Festival auditions are so horrific that I would be super surprised if you don’t remember it like it was yesterday. Even so, I promise to write more about it later, but it will require me to devote an entire letter to that subject alone.

Maybe you’re wondering why I was such a glutton for punishment, but here’s the thing: all these disastrous tryouts surprised me. In elementary school, I had joined lots of teams/groups/clubs. So, I just assumed middle school would be the same. But here’s the other thing: in elementary school, everyone makes the team or gets into the group or can be part of the club. But it didn’t take long to realize all those obligatory participation ribbons that hung on my dresser mirror didn’t mean anything, because it turns out that in middle school, some type of talent combined with a certain amount of skill is a prerequisite for everything you do. And from the list above, it’s extremely obvious that I was lacking both in all the things that really mattered.