From left to right: freshmen Cameron Ryan, Haoxi Wang, Brenda Freitas, Sean Lightbody, Olivia Santengelo, Schekina Pericles, Allison Mallet, Ezra Kruckenberg. Photo taken by Emraude Bonnet.
BY NICOLLE BATISTA & EMRAUDE BONNET
As a freshman myself, I definitely understand the struggle. Personally, in the first few weeks everything confused me and messed me up. The whole schedule thing was very confusing, and I usually had to put my schedule as my phone lock screen so I could get from class to class quicker without looking at my paper schedule. The fact that a class dropped every day seemed complicated at first but is now something that is cherished, considering the fact that for one class a day you don’t have to do the homework assigned that night because you don’t have it the next day.
The periods confused me, and I’ve walked into the wrong classroom and sat down without noticing at least once. It used to take me 10 minutes to find my U.S History class because it was in Boyle and I didn’t even know the difference between the houses. I accidentally used the wrong locker then got politely threatened with a note saying I was using the wrong locker and they would cut my locker if I didn’t take my stuff out. As most freshman still do, I used to bring all my stuff with me to every class, which resulted in me basically breaking my back, so I used a tip I got from a senior to just switch out my books every few periods.
In addition to being confused about everything and anything, the second week I managed to fall down the stairs in front of a crowd of upperclassmen. Freshman: 0 High School: 1. Mostly everything I do gets responded to with, “you’re only a freshman,” by my upperclassmen friends. I’ve been late to classes because I didn’t realize the lines for the bathrooms would be so long. I’ve personally been screwed over by the lunch bells and the fact that certain teachers have certain lunch periods so you’re either having brunch at 10:45 am or actual lunch at 12:15 pm. Personally, lunch isn’t an exact issue for me because I have the pleasure of knowing my friends from my old school, a few people from the other middle schools, and people from my classes, so it’s not as bad as most movies make lunch for freshman seem. It still is awkward that I bring my own lunch though, because mostly everyone buys school lunch and I usually don’t see anyone else with their own lunch, even though there are most likely 100 kids that bring their own lunch.
I would say there are so many advantages of being in high school, like being able to pick your own electives, and downsides, like not being able to see your best friends if you don’t have any classes together, but altogether, being a freshman is confusing yet exciting, and I can’t wait to see what else is coming my way.
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