Freshmen. Typically characterized by mouths full of braces and strangely small statures, these doe-eyed innocents spend their free time running to class and standing still in the hallways. Can anyone blame them, though? High school is a big, scary, new world and it takes time to adapt.
Senior Shelby Hartzell, a freshmen mentor, said she thinks most freshmen worry too much.
“This boy in my study hall freaked out at the beginning of the year about ‘freshmen Friday’ but it doesn’t even exist,” she said. “He was asking all these questions and he was so scared, but I remember being like that too.”
A lot of students seem to remember their greatest fears when they first started high school.
“I was worried about getting lost in the hallways, because I thought the teachers would be a lot stricter and they’d give out detentions on the first day,” junior Kara Milnac said.
Hartzell agreed, and said she was under even worse pressure because times in between classes were shorter when she was in ninth grade.
“I was so paranoid that I would run to all of my classes,” she said.
Freshman Curtis Strong got off to that same rocky start his first day at Hoover.
“I got lost and I was late to some of my classes,” he said. “I thought all of my teachers were going to give me detentions, but they didn’t.”
Hoover’s freshmen mentoring program, which is in its third year, hopes to alleviate some of these major concerns.
“I really value our freshmen mentor program,” Guidance Counselor Mrs. Barbara Tarantino said. “I think that helps freshmen make connections right away and introduces them to new activities.”
Tarantino said she thinks freshmen need to get involved in after school activities as soon as possible.
“Getting involved is the number one most important thing for freshmen,” she said. “There are so many more options available than strictly academics. Students that just come and go aren’t getting the full high school experience and as a result they aren’t as happy.”
Hoover offers many options for extra-curriculars, from choir and drama to Ultimate Frisbee club. Freshman Scott Heighway said he notices the difference between middle and high school.
“High school [is] a lot better than middle school because it’s less stressful and there’s more freedom,” he said.
But not all freshmen feel this way.
“It’s not as fun as middle school because we don’t have many privileges this year,” Strong said. “There’s no little kids to boss around.”
Junior Katrina Scherer said she remembers being a big shot in eighth grade, but hopes current freshmen will try to put the past behind them.
“They come here from the middle school thinking they’re still these cool eighth graders, but really they’re just little fish in a big pond.”
Mr. Jeff Pickle, who teaches freshman science, said that during this transition period, students need to make changes in order to survive.
“My tip for freshmen is that they need to keep organized,” he said. “The biggest problem that I see is students being unprepared. Some of them have never studied for tests before and they need to get in good habits.”
Scherer said she definitely could have used that advice her freshman year.
“The thing that scared me most was the workload,” she said. “I thought I was going to have hours of homework and it’d all be really hard.”
Hartzell agreed, but said she wishes she wouldn’t have taken herself so seriously.
“I obsessed over all the hard classes too much and I burned myself out,” she said. “I don’t think I was able to enjoy my freshmen year as much as I could have.”
But some freshmen seem to be immune to the stress, and actually seem to be thriving in this new environment.
“All of my classes have been pretty easy so far,” freshman Greg Erbin said.
Freshman Bree Schillig said she also found her classes less challenging than she anticipated, and is enjoying her first year of high school.
“I don’t think it’s that bad because you get a lot of freedom,” she said.
But there is one lesson that Schillig and hopefully many other freshmen have learned.
“I’ve learned never to stand still in the hallways ever,” Schillig said.
On one particularly crowded morning, Strong said he witnessed one of every freshmen’s worst nightmares.
“I saw this other freshman get hit in the back and he dropped all of his books and then he slipped on one of his papers,” he said.
Blocking the hallways seems to be upperclassmens’ greatest annoyance with the freshmen.
“I feel frustrated that they don’t understand that the rest of us have important places to be,” Hartzell said.
Heighway, however, is keeping positive about his freshman year and said he is doing his best to avoid the upperclassmens’ wrath.
“I don’t fit into the lockers anyway, so I’m not worried,” he said.