The Freshmen Experience

By Kevin Liu
January 31, 2024

Many of you reading this have probably experienced being a freshman or are currently going through this experience. And coincidentally, they are all pretty similar. Why? It is because we all start the year with similar thoughts.                                                                                          

To start the year, you would definitely want to have goals. Now they don’t have to all be academic goals, they can also be social goals. Meet new people and be careful of those who might get you into trouble.

Since all the freshmen are new to this school, most people are complete strangers with one another. In my opinion, we need at least one or two friends in order to survive through high school. If you are very social, maybe even try going for a whole circle of friends. Friends are a very essential part of not just your Freshman year, but the entire journey throughout high school. They are going to be the ones that are going to bring help you to get through the tough moments. 

 COVID-19, made it extremely difficult for teenagers to regain their social skills. People were forced to stay in-doors which made everyone find a way to avoid education. Everyone’s on TikTok or any type of entertainment apps. This is not the best idea to improve social interactions.

Another massive factor in mostly everyone’s Freshman year or any other year is gaming! Gaming takes up a huge percentage of our everyday lives. With incoming freshmen's desire to be stress-free, they play games. Games not only entertain you but also kill time for you. It becomes a way of hiding from reality, and that could end up in a bad result for some people. So be careful not to overindulge in gaming.

Because of the lack of social skills, freshman typically don’t engaging in afterschool programs. This can be a problem because you are limiting your high school experience to classes. That gets boring. After school clubs can be fun when you join with friends. Media club, art clubs, newspaper, running club, and sports teams enhance your experience and most of them are low commitment.