Being the New Guy Is Always Painful. but It Gets Better

When I was a kid in first grade, everyone else knew each other from preschool. For the first two weeks, I was beaten up every day — by those who later became my best friends.

At some point in our lives, we are all the new kids somewhere. The first day at university, at a new job, or a sports club is intimidating. Everyone already knows what the rules are and what codes you need to know to avoid getting into trouble. Only you don’t know anything yet. We don’t know anyone, and the old hands eye us with suspicion.

A lesson from childhood

When I was seven years old, my parents moved me from a small village to a big city over a hundred kilometers away from everything I knew.

My parents had decided to send me to school in the new city when I was seven instead of when I was six in the village. They already knew that we would move and wanted to save me from having to get used to a new school after only one year.

All the other children in the new school already knew each other from the preschool when I arrived. There were thirty-two of us, and I was the only new kid.

I missed my friends from the village and found the big city confusing and threatening. That’s why I tried not to stand out too much during my first days at school. But that’s exactly what made my classmates take notice of me.

Four of them lived on the same street as my parents and me, so we had the same route home after school. Because I was constantly walking a few meters behind them after the first day of school, they thought I was following them. Therefore, from the second day of school, they started pushing and hitting me.

They were kids, and kids can be cruel. It’s easy to say as an adult, but it’s hell when you experience it as a child.

The bullying went on for almost two weeks. I told my parents that I never wanted to go back to school. But I didn’t tell them why, because I was afraid of looking like a traitor.

Then I came to a point where I decided that I couldn’t go on like this. I had already tried to explain to the other children that I lived on the same street, which was the only reason I always took the same route as them. But they never let me get a word in edgewise.

So I had to force them to listen to me. Then I noticed that I was a year older than my bullies. Because they always came at me four at a time, it had never occurred to me that I might be superior to them. But when I looked at them closely, I realized that each of them was smaller and weaker than me. At that age, a year’s difference makes a lot of difference.

When they attacked me again, I fought back for the first time instead of just sitting in the corner crying. Full of fear, but with the courage of desperation, I grabbed the leader and put him in a headlock. I yelled at the others to leave me alone, or I wouldn’t let go of their friend. He was terrified and begged them to stay away. And they did.

Finally, my chance had come. Everyone listened to what I said. So I told them why I always went the same way they did. The astonishment on their faces showed me that they had never thought about this possibility. Children are sometimes not only cruel but often quite obtuse.

“Why didn’t you say so?” one of them asked me reproachfully. “Then we wouldn’t have had to beat you up at all.”

When I think back on it today, I have to laugh at this strange logic. At the time, of course, I didn’t feel like laughing a bit. But that was the day from which it got better.

Suddenly the others accepted me. We became best friends. We became the gang from our street. I finally belonged. Because I had stood my ground and made it clear who I was.

Being the new guy as an adult

When you start at a new company or join a sports team, the old hands probably won’t beat you up. But they will keep an eye on you.

It often feels like there’s not that much difference from grade school in my line of work. I’m an author and spend a lot of time in forums and Facebook groups where authors exchange ideas. There you meet many experienced colleagues, some of whom have been earning their living with writing for decades.

When young, inexperienced authors who have just written their first book appear in these groups from time to time, many are very helpful. But there is out the hyena pack that pounces on every beginner.

If an inexperienced author posts a question, a cover for discussion, or links to their book, the hyenas are there. I don’t even want to know how many promising talents have given up writing forever after such an experience.

What can be done to avoid such experiences? How does one avoid being pushed out as the new guy?

You can’t prevent it. The hyenas are always already there. They dominate a part of the terrain on which one wants to gain a foothold. And most of the time, they make you feel that you don’t belong yet.

So make sure you belong more and more as time goes on. If they threaten you, but you don’t give in, they will have to get used to you. We always have to go through a trial period first everywhere. But trial periods pass.

Everyone becomes an old hand at some point if they stick with it long enough.

What I learned as a kid is this: being new will suck until it doesn’t.

We decide what we let break us and what we don’t. The bullies only have the power we give them.

René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.

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