Freshman 101: A Courteous Fair Warning

There comes a time in everyone’s lives where you are the resented, picked on, and “fresh meat” of the high school. Your freshman year is sort of feared or hated, but the people who do it right, can look back and remember all the fun stuff they did. Yeah, it will consist of bumming rides and countless mistakes but you’ll be fine. It’s okay, everyone had to go through it. They just didn’t have these 600 words to lead them to success. If you are reading this and you are in the 9th grade, take this and use it, store this in your brain. When the time comes, you’ll be thanking me.

First and foremost, there are four minutes between each class. Right now you are thinking, “Emilie, there were that many in middle school too.” Yeah, that was middle school, back when life got tough when you were assigned a 5-paragraph essay. Now, I know that doesn’t seem like a long time, trust me, tardies were the scariest things I had ever heard of.  Anyway, when you show up tardy, some teachers show no remorse, they don’t even care where you were. Bam. You have an unrelenting tardy on your record. There also might be a couple of the teachers that have the rule of, “You must be sitting in your assigned seat when the bell rings.” You think they might be joking, but in all seriousness, find your seat at the 3 minute mark. Some teachers will give you a fair warning when you walk in after the bell, and tell you to get there on time, you should take that as a gift from heaven and quietly and rapidly get to your seat. Your life will be easier if you just aren’t tardy, there are consequences.

Since there are only four minutes, don’t spend all of them staring into the eyes of your Romeo expecting him to get handsomer. Believe me when I say, you’ll only be apart for 50 minutes, surely your love won’t weaken before you can reunite for four more. I know this sounds a little harsh, but someone is bound to roll their eyes at you if your and Romeo’s embrace is blocking their locker. Or maybe he decides to walk you to class, it’s a wise decision not to make your hand holding as wide as the hallway. Your arms will be plowed. Just settle with the shake of the hand and a wink and call it good. Save the mushy stuff for when a good 300 people don’t have to watch. Take that into consideration and so many more upperclassman will sort of appreciate your existence.

Some miscellaneous tips would be: always wear your lanyard (The consequence is basically the death sentence), be nice to your teachers (No teacher wants to be nice to a rude freshman, get a reality check and realize you’re at the bottom of the totem pole. You don’t want to climb it known as the rude kid.) Just take your freshman year and make the most fun out of it that you can.

Everyone is a freshman once in their life. Don’t take mean things to heart, people are just trying to seek revenge on what happened to them. Your freshman year really won’t be that bad. High School is supposed to be a fun time in your life so don’t try to ruin it by stressing over one assignment. You can get through the tests you did badly on, don’t start stressing your freshman year. It will lead to early life hair loss. Okay, doubt it. But really, enjoy it while you have it because all the upperclassmen would give anything to be a freshman again.