So you’ve graduated from middle school, congratulations! The awkward years of dealing with braces, acne, and prank notes from your supposedly secret admirer are over...hopefully. With August approaching soon, you’ve probably finished reading your summer assignments (if you’re an overachiever), or you’re attempting to read a page a night praying that you will finish it in time (if you’re everyone else). Either way, nearly every recently graduated middle school student is excited about their future ahead—about the classes they will take and the people they will meet. But here are a few things to keep in mind for your upcoming freshman year, little grasshoppers:
1. Don’t overload yourself with honors Spanish (or French), honors earth science, honors math and honors orchestra. Yes freshman year is the year to set your base GPA; it is also the easiest year of high school in terms of academics. Take your classes seriously, but don’t forget that this year should be used to meet new people too, and even take up a new extracurricular. Better yet, it’s a great time to start your community service hours. With that being said…
2. Don’t think freshman year will be a complete breeze. After all, high school science teachers will not put on Bill Nye because “it’s not an active way to learn.” Believe me, we once asked our teacher about this one.
3. It’s never too early to start forming a game plan for your next four years (thoughts about college or other plans after graduation are included). Yes, Harvard is grand, Harvard is great, Harvard is Harvard. But we all can’t get into Harvard–that doesn’t mean you can’t have it as a goal. Princeton and Yale, too! You most certainly can and should set the bar high if you’re a hard-working, intelligent individual. With that said, freshman year is also a good time to ready your mind for that murky unknown road ahead. Plan well, yes, but what if you don’t get into your dream school? What other kinds of schools would you be happy to get into? It’s never too early to start talking with your parents and coming up with a game plan/setting goals (that are reasonable), especially for something that may become a very emotional and stressful journey.
P.S. Treat your teachers with respect, they are the ones who decide if you get into an AP course sophomore year or not. Plus, if there’s good word about you within the faculty, chances are that at the end of junior year, you’ll get a great recommendation letter for college.
4. Don’t stress yourself out about dating during freshman year. In fact, it doesn’t even matter if you don’t date sophomore, junior or senior year. But oh no won’t you be made fun of? That’s one of the beauties of being in high school–you will be in a larger environment, and because it’s high school, I can assure you, other students will have matured a little more between the years of horrendous seventh grade and ninth grade to be able to respect your decisions to not date, or whatever reason you don’t have a “special someone.”
5. But if you do find a "special someone" freshman year… You’re a teenager thus you may not be the best at making heavy romantic decisions. I would get into the whole science of it all, like how the frontal lobe of teenagers isn’t fully...never mind, just trust me on this one. Google the neuroscience of it later please. And remember, there is no rush. You will respect yourself way more, whether you are a guy or girl, if you wait.
6. People grow and people change. Freshman year is a great time to make new friends, especially if you find that your eighth-grade best friends have their own separate interests from you. It will hurt at first to know you’ve grown apart from them, but it’s okay. Or, it will be okay. While right now you might not see it, throughout high school, even towards the end of senior year, you will be making new friends, growing closer to old friends and, yes, letting go of some other ones too.
7. If on your last day of high school you look back to your first day of high school and realize that you have no regrets, then you’ve done your four years right. Regrets are never a good thing–whether it’s, “I wish I had worked harder in high school,” or, “I wish I had spoken up more for myself,” or, “I wish I hadn’t walked around with a huge messy bun on my head”; it’s the fits of “I wish” and “what ifs” that bother people the most. These are the questions that cloud people’s memories. So my advice to you: this is your first year of high school, your time is now (thank you Tolstoy). Do what you can now so that when you advance to sophomore year, you will feel satisfied and ready to tackle your latest goals and desires for that year, and so on.
I wish I could say that high school was easy and breezy for me. It wasn’t. It wasn’t for anyone I knew, either. But it was a time of experiencing new things, just like every other chapter of your life. Though some days were sunnier than others, and other days were like a severe New England blizzard, I must say, high school was still one heck of a great time. And it will be for you too, if you let it be.
