HARRY POTTER.

I can guess what you were thinking when you saw the title of my latest blog post. "Typical Greta, talking about Harry Potter."

That's the problem.

I remember seventh grade- it was the year before the seventh harry potter book was published. At that point in my life, I had read all of the books once, but I didn't remember much. I thought it would be a good idea to re-read the entire series in preparation for the next book. It was at that time that I realized that the series was pretty amazing. The magical atmosphere adds a fun and interesting twist on the struggles that every teenager faces. I read the books again, each time catching new details or making different connections to the characters. I was obsessed. I read analyses of the series, listened to podcasts, bought t-shirts... You name it- I probably did it. By eighth grade, I was a full-fledged fanatic. I avidly read fan-fiction, and even took a stab at writing a story or two. Ninth grade proved to be more of the same. It was all Harry, all the time. But by sophomore year, the passion I had felt for the books started to decrease. I still liked to talk about the books (and occasionally sport my time turner) but I could feel the obsessive-ness dwindling. When the premiere of the seventh movie rolled around during my junior year, I hardly even had time to get excited. What used to occupy nearly all of my waking thoughts had become a fun thing to do on a Thursday night.


It's not that I don't like Harry Potter anymore. I still think that JK Rowling is a genius and that the books are phenomenal. But it isn't my life anymore. In hindsight, I think I liked the attention I got in middle school from being such a big fan. Everybody knew that I was the girl to talk to about Harry Potter. Now, it isn't such a big part of my life. I am no longer the squealing fan girl I was freshman year. The hard part is getting everybody else to see it. While I have changed, people's perceptions of me haven't. I'm still the obsessed geek in the eyes of a lot of people at my school, and I'm struggling to show them that I am so much more.