In the junior high school at which the investigator taught, a large number of students enter the ninth grade each term from several K-8 schools. In these schools the children spend the greatest part of e a ch school day in the same classroom with the same teacher, without any departmentalization during the seventh and eighth grades. At the j un ior high school complete departmentalization is the rule. Another large group of students enter the junior high school at the seventh-grade level. These children are immediately placed on a strict ly departmental schedule. They follow a departmental schedule for grades seven, eight and nine. To explore one phase of the reaction of these two entering groups of children to the departmental situation, the brief study reported herein was undertaken. The problem might be stated somewhat like this: How are the school problems that disturb seventh-grade children enter ing a departmental situation different from the school problems of ninth graders entering the same situation for the first time?