 They say that teachers shouldn't have favourite students, but I'm about to reveal to you who my favourite students are. So you're a new rate now. You're confident, you've broken the ice, you've completed year seven, you've made a couple of friends. You now know the ropes around the school, you now know what some of the teachers are like and you now maybe know some older kids too. So where do you go from here? And what I've noticed is some year eight students and a lot of year eight students become a little bit complacent. Yeah, nah, I've done year seven, it wasn't that hard. Do I have to try now? Who knows? I've seen some year eights identify them that they can get away with a lot more than they realised and that's because there are many different teachers out there, they can act different ways to different teachers and the next one won't realise what they've done since the previous teacher. But let me tell you, the teachers do communicate and they do keep an eye on you together to collaborate to make sure that you're in check. I'm not trying to scare you here, but I do need to tell you that you need to focus. It's year eight. Right, it's still middle school and you're still learning the foundations of every subject. You may not be interested in science. You may not be interested in English, but the reason that you go through some of these subjects is to be able to identify what you want to do later. And what I mean by identify is I mean try what you want to push your interests towards. And these subjects from my perspective help you do that. The one thing that you can continue on doing is enjoying yourself, enjoying hanging out with your friends, enjoying the good interactions with your teachers, as well as enjoying the respect that you give your fellow students and obviously your teachers and then receive that good karma back. Now I do want to talk about bullying because I noticed in my last few years of teaching that bullying has been a bigger factor in year eight and going into year nine. Now if you find yourself being bullied, then the first thing that you can simply do, and I know it sounds cliche, but you can ignore them. That's it. Ignore them. Don't look at them. Don't talk back to them. Just ignore them because eventually they'll get bored and then you're off and left alone and you can do your own thing. Sounds good. But what happens if they continue to bother you for weeks, months, term after term, they still want to bully you? Well that's when you have to speak up. Why not try to tell them how you feel and say, hey, this action of yours or the way that you talk about me is making me feel bad? Tell them straight up how you feel. Not in an angry way, not in an attacking way. Just tell them how you feel and see what happens. If they still persist, then that's when you start talking to the teachers and try to do that sooner than later if they keep persisting. Give it a go. See what happens. But the main thing is do not retaliate. If you fuel their fire, it will keep burning and they will push harder and harder and it will get worse and worse. So step one, ignore. Step two, tell them how you feel. Step three, tell the teachers and talk to them about it. So what does adversity mean? Adversity means a difficult or unpleasant situation. So let's say you're being bullied and you've never been bullied before and all of a sudden man, that doesn't feel nice. Maybe if you are the bully and you've never been bullied yourself but all of a sudden someone else, maybe they're older than you or maybe someone else finds your insecurity and goes absolutely hardcore on letting you know about it. How would that make you feel? And that's you facing adversity. So both sides of the fence, you can face adversity at any point in time and it might throw you off. But then how you go about it, how you reflect from it can help you grow stronger and be a better person. Maybe you realise, oh, someone telling me about my funny hair or that my nose looks big or something like that, that didn't feel good. Oh, me telling that boy the other day that his hat is silly, he must have felt the same way. I should really stop. And alternatively on the other side of the fence, if you're being bullied, then, you know, unfortunately in reality, there are times throughout your life where you're going to face that sort of experience over and over. And the more that you deal with, I mean, nobody has to put up with it. The more that you deal with it and the more that you face it, the stronger you will be. And then one day, hopefully sooner than later, someone will come up to you and say, hey, Seth, I don't like how tall you are. You're too tall. And I'll be like, that's unfortunate for you. I'm sorry that you feel that way. Carry on. Or you can go the classic. I don't remember you are or you can go the classic. I don't remember me asking. There's many ways to do it. However, ignoring them, diffusing the situation straight away, moving on and doing going about your own thing is the most important. So the final steps to getting through year eight. You're full of confidence. It's fantastic, but you need to focus. You can play. You can enjoy yourself, but make sure that you get the work done first, even if you don't like it, even if the teacher doesn't really hit it the right way. You don't feel a vibe. Try your best and then start to enjoy the remainder of the lesson since you've completed all your work. Bullying. Well, don't be a bully. And if you are being bullied, then ignore it and then make sure that you talk to the bully about it, that you don't appreciate it. And then you talk to your teachers and so on. Adversity is important to face because one day you may be in a dream world where no negativity has come about you. And then all of a sudden one person says, I don't like the way you look. How will you respond if your whole life has never faced any negativity? It may crush you. It may crush you a lot. So grow stronger while you can because you can grow stronger your entire life. And now to my favorite students and in no particular order, they are. It's the students that do their own thing. Be the person they want to be and they don't accept any negativity. And what I mean by that is any negativity that comes their way. They just say, oh, oh, well, whatever. That's your problem. That's your opinion. I want to wear my funky sunglasses at recess and lunch. I'm going to keep doing it. I don't care that you're not a fan of them. Maybe one day you can find something unique about you because I like wearing my shades. Those confident students are my favorite types of students. Be yourself. Be a good person and treat others the way that you want to be treated. And you'll have an amazing year eight. So that's it. Thank you for listening, guys. And I really appreciate it. I hope you like my previous video. I know it was a little bit of a long one, but I try to make this one a little bit shorter and condense my thoughts. Let me know what you think in between the two different videos. And obviously hit that subscribe and the bell notification button over there or wherever it is. Leave a comment and, as always, a good thanks.