High School Preparation

Back in middle school (which seemed like a lifetime ago) we had so many presentations to prepare us for the upcoming high school years. For some reason, none of them could put out my fear of the huge school I was about to attend. This was where all the grades started counting. I feel if I screw up just one test, my whole life is messed up. It’s not a good feeling. When we had a tour of the high school, I remember thinking “Man, this place is enormous!” To my horror, I found out I was looking at only one third of the school. Each third of the school is a different house: Fitts, Townsend, and Pequot. I got stuck in Pequot, the great house with no air conditioning. Each house is color coded… like that’s supposed to keep my fear at bay or something.

Next stop on the tour of confusion and frustration was learning about the schedules. Back in 6th grade I felt overwhelmed at the thought of having a schedule… and I thought I had problems then… There’s not a single day that’s the same schedule, no, they had to make it as twisted and messed up as possible. One day you’ll have period one at the end, beginning, or middle of the day and same with all the other periods. It’s like someone just randomly threw together all the periods in one huge collage of chaos. There must be some kind of purpose to making this schedule. Some of the kids that were giving high school presentations told us that even they hadn’t mastered the high school schedule and they were seniors!

Even in this confusing new place there are a few safety zones… the cafeteria. Just the vastness with all the lunch tables and the food waiting in the open doors of the lunch lady zone beckons you in and you already know that this is the best place to be in the whole high school. Luckily, I’ve visited the high school before; I’ve only been in the large gym for a chorus festival and on the upper level of the gym for wrestling practice. I think it helped a lot to get to know where my PE classes are going to be around the school, just another problem to cross off the list of doom.

When I visited the high school, I found a lot of mixed emotions about how students in the high school felt about the place. Usually, the presentations are hosted by the student council members or some other student club that helps the school out with stuff. But, as you walk down the halls, you’ll hear kids trying to freak you out, screaming at you from the cafeteria that high school’s going to kill you. After that, the last thing I needed to be informed about is that the first Friday you have of high school is called Freshman Friday. It’s when everybody else in the school chases down freshman and spray paints “frosh” all over them. Sometimes, they’ll even roll you down a hill in a garbage can and stupid stuff like that. I asked a senior where good hiding spots were… he said there weren't any. Thanks… I think I’m going to wake up sick that day…

I can’t believe there’s so much to worry about with high school. It’s the last thing I want to do over the summer but I guess I can’t help it because high school is basically unavoidable. It’s far too late to think about staying back now. People say it flies by but I just can’t understand why. With so many opinions about such a confusing place, it’s nearly impossible to tell about what high school is going to be like. All I need to know now is that it’s going to be harder than any other school I’ve gone through and my goal for this summer is to try and wrap my mind around that. You may laugh at me, but think back to how you felt right before your freshman year…