Welcome former middle schoolers, to your first day of high school, in the building where you will probably spend the next 4 years of your life. For some it might be a bit intimidating, others may not be worried at all. For the ones who are worried, chill out for a second. Take a second to breathe. It’s a lot harder to completely screw yourself over in freshman year then you might think. I mean even if you fail every class, don’t talk to anyone, and lose all your friends doesn’t mean your highschool experience is over. Trust me, as the generation of covid freshman, I and most of my fellow seniors would know. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things you should do if you want to have as good a time as possible over these next few years, so here’s what you should know.

First of all, the building itself. Now just walking in, it looks very strange. Some of the hallways are tight and claustrophobic, the roof curves up and down randomly, there are strange appendages sticking out of the main body, and it’s 3 floors! When I just got here coming from the neat and orderly Nelson, it looked like a labyrinth. Let me wipe away the mystery. On the first floor, to the right is the cafeteria and the offices, to the left is the social studies rooms.Very simple. On the second floor, it is basically a square, with a hallway extending on the left. Along the square is history, and a few electives. Down the hallway is music, language classes, and at the end is art and engineering. Pretty simple layout there. The top floor is also easy. To the left down the first two hallways is math. The third one connected to them with all the labs is science. Once you divide the building by these blocks, it starts making a whole lot more sense.

Second of all, I’d like to correct an unfortunate myth. You may be coming into this place with the expectation that it will make everything change. It will somehow turn you into an adult, and in 4 years it will have completely changed you. The correction here is, highschool won’t be the thing that really changes your life. You will be. High school won’t allow you to drive around and buy whatever you want, getting a license and a job will, neither of which actually have anything to do with school. High school won’t let you go to parties or vacation with your friends, getting friends who do that will. Just showing up isn’t going to get you sports or extracurriculars, getting up and doing that will. If you have an idea of who you want to be when you graduate, you can’t just expect that you’ll magically become that person by just going to high school. It is entirely possible to become a senior and not have done any of that. This is aimed toward the people you haven’t really been engaged with school so far. In middle school you can just show up and go home every day and you won’t really be any different than anyone else by the time you’re done. After all, even though you can change as a person between 6th and 6th grade most people don’t really materially change. If you told you to write a report containing every notable thing you have done when you were just starting 6th grade and today, your report might not be that different, and that’s fine. If I ask you to make another one at the end of high school and it isn’t that different, well that is a genuine problem, that everyone is going to notice, and if you do want it to be different then you have to start to change. And change is something that you have to do actively.

So be engaged. Join a sport, a club, a band. Things aren’t just going to happen to you, you have to do things. Otherwise, you might stay a freshman until you graduate.