The Woes of Being a High School Freshman

In honor of the first day of school for local students, I thought I would share with you a narrative of my first day at Bel Air High School.

I woke up on the first day of school as nervous as I was excited—nine years later I can still remember exactly what I wore.

I headed down to the bus stop with my backpack full of school supplies and my clarinet in tow (Yes, I was in band and marching band, and I’m proud of it).

I made my way onto the bus only to realize there were no seats left, and a majority of the seats already had three people in them. So, I had to sit down in the middle of the aisle with all my stuff. Not a great start, but I thought, “No big deal; I can handle this.”

We got to school, and I got off the bus, walked into the building, and a teacher who was pushing a cart with a big TV on top of it—and not watching where she was going—ran right into me and knocked me over in the middle of the lobby.

I got up and extracted myself from the scene of the run-in immediately and headed to homeroom to get my locker combination. I found my locker and tried the combination when, shocker, it didn’t work (I later found out they had given me the wrong locker number, but the combination for my correct locker).

So I had to leave my backpack with my homeroom teacher all day and ended up carrying all my stuff—and when each teacher gives you a new textbook, that becomes very heavy.

When I went in to what I thought was my honors ninth-grade government class, I found that I was accidently put in a remedial class. I was too nervous to say anything, so I just sat there for an hour completely perplexed.

My school also had an, “Up Only Staircase.” I went down it … twice … by accident, got yelled at and had to go back the correct way both times.

Finally, when the horrid day was over, and I went out to find my bus to go home, I couldn’t find it. It started to pull out, and I was left running after it. I eventually got on, but it was a disaster.

Now as you can imagine, this was a horrific first day of high school. And I pretty much wanted to crawl up and die when it was over—not to mention I had bruises from the cart run-in.

However, the moral of the story here is one bad day does not mean you should give up. I went on to love high school. I was actively involved in sports and even made All-County. I wrote for the paper, was in National Honor Society, band, and even made homecoming court. So everything worked out in the end.

So my advice to all you freshmen out there: Your first day may be horrid, but keep heart my friends—it will get better.

Just duck when you see any cart-pushing teachers.