Freshman year can be a difficult transition from middle school to high school. You may still feel like a kid, not someone who’s already looking at colleges. However, being prepared for the next three years of high school will save you a lot of stress.
Getting involved in a variety of activities at Mentor High School is a great way to make the rest of high school more interesting. To those interested in college, joining clubs and sports is a great way to find things to put on your college application. Those who aren’t interested in college, even though you will not be applying to college, clubs can help you make friends and find new interests.
“I think it’s good to get involved in different clubs,” Emma Lieberg, a senior at MHS said. Emma Lieberg is a cheerleader for the varsity football and basketball squad, and is also part of NHS (National Honors Society). Some of the other clubs she listed were the recycling club, the art club, the language club, etc. She recommends going to different sporting events because you may find new people and join the clubs they are in.
“You could find interests in unexpected ways,” Lieberg said. Lieberg recommends joining the NHS because it can help you gain the number of community service hours you need to graduate. She thinks that NHS is a good way to earn community service because in both semesters you have to accumulate 20 hours of community service.
One big thing that freshmen may struggle with is making new friends. Entering Mentor High School, there are students from different middle schools, such as Shore Middle School and Memorial Middle School. Molly Tenney, a senior at MHS, had the same problem when she was a freshman. Tenney wasn’t sure what she wanted to do in her freshman year and didn’t have many friends.
“Freshman year especially,” Tenney said, “it was more about just figuring out who I was.” Despite Tenney struggling to make new friends in her freshman year, she now has a good friend group that she is happy with. She recommends freshmen to try out new things and get involved in the activities at MHS because that might make it easier to find some new friends.
“Get involved in whatever you think might be fun,” Tenney says. “Try it out – if you don’t like it you don’t have to do it again, but you might love it, and you might find a really good group of people.”
Finding your group of people may seem impossible when you do not know anyone, but being kind could make all the difference. It is easy to feel insecure when you enter high school as the youngest students. It can feel daunting, not knowing anyone, having peers from different schools, and being the youngest students in MHS. Many students may feel this way, not just you.
“That’s how you make good friends,” Tenney said, “is just like other people are self-conscious, too, so by being kind, you open up a door to let them say, ‘Oh, I can talk to her. I can hang out with her. I can make friends,’ because that’s really gonna let everyone be a little more comfortable around each other.”
That is why you should be kind to your peers to make them feel less hesitant to branch out. Tenney explained that, if she were a freshman again, she would not care as much about what everybody else thinks, would try to be more friendly, and be more willing to talk to people.
“What I learned is that everyone is just looking at themselves,” Tenney said. Being confident and kind can make all the difference in your high school experience and can even help others be more confident in themselves.
Also, it is okay if you don’t have an idea of what you want to do after high school. Even if you have an idea of what you want to do, that may change over time. Such is the case of Chase Coleman, another senior at MHS.
Coleman is the captain of the varsity football team and is involved in MHS’s CTE (Career Technical Education) program. Coleman wants to be an athletic trainer and get a degree in exercise science. When he was a freshman, he aimed to study criminology and pursue a career in law enforcement, but this changed when Coleman discovered football at MHS and fell in love with the sport. He thinks freshmen shouldn’t worry too much about what to do when they get out of high school.
“Don’t worry about it,” Coleman says. “I mean, you got four years ahead of you. I mean, I know even as a freshman I didn’t have a clear-cut idea. I had ideas, of course, like how I wanted to be a cop, but I wasn’t dead set on it.”
For those not interested in school, Coleman recommends putting effort in regardless, because failing on purpose will just make it worse for yourself.
The biggest piece of advice for freshmen that Emma Lieberg and Molly Tenney have in common is to get involved and to try new things. Lieberg recommends getting involved in volunteering and community service early because it will make your college applications stand out from the crowd. Tenney said to get involved because it might create more opportunities for you and help you find new friends. Coleman recommends enjoying your high school years because you will never get them back.
“Slow down and enjoy it,” Coleman says. “I mean it’s gonna seem boring in the moment and I know it is because I’ve been through it before but I mean it is some of the best four years of your life and you’ll never get it back. So all you can do is enjoy it. You will literally never get it back and it sounds sad but all you can do is make the most out of it cause one day you’re gonna be looking back on it and you wanna look back on it in a good way.”
Senior year may seem far away, but it is closer than you think. However, it is something to look forward to, not to fear. There are many perks to being a senior, such as Senior Sunrise, senior skip days, a more open schedule, and access to the junior/senior nook near the Student Center. Worrying about the future is a feeling many can relate to; however, being prepared using these seniors’ advice and experience may make the rest of your high school years less stressful.
