My middle school had a cooking class and a sewing class, each of which we all took at different times. I saved my favorite recipe from the cooking class (a poppy seed cake) and made it a few times even after the class was over (but have since lost the recipe for.) I remember we used a pudding mix in it, which I wouldn’t have thought to do before. Meanwhile in sewing, we made letter-shaped pillows of our initials, which I really enjoyed. I ended up hand-sewing the rest of the letters of my name after the class was over to go along with it.

The only complaint I have is that the electives for my middle school (which were mandatory, so hardly “elective”) were cooler than the electives for my high school. I remember other schools having things like metal shop and swimming. A friend from Canada had an entire booklet of electives to choose from. My school had a single sheet of options, many with stupid names that didn’t reflect what they really were. I ended up taking an interior design class because the name made it sound like it would teach practical home skills. Granted, I still enjoyed the class and learned a lot from it (and have been able to apply the knowledge, even if just when building in the Sims.) Though if the classes had descriptions that actually fit what they were teaching, I probably would’ve taken something else. There were even a few boys who had signed up for that class, just to transfer out after the first day. Like me, they thought they’d be learning how to handle home finances or something, not learning how to identify a Queen Anne era chair by the style of its legs.