What’s it like to be a freshman at Chelsea High School?

By Katie Rae Hayduk

My first thought when I entered high school was, this is big.

My second thought was, this is very big.

As a freshman, I feel small compared to the upperclassmen who rule the school.

I’m a fly navigating the hallways between classes – tiny and unimportant.

Honestly, though, high school is much more stressful than middle school was. The classes are 70-minutes long instead of 50-minutes long, so there are only five classes a day unlike seven in the middle school. These longer periods are grueling. After about an hour, it gets difficult to concentrate on the same topic and it’s hard to sit still.

There is more homework every day than in middle school. For my current classes, each night I have to read a selection for English and answer questions, work through at least one lesson’s worth of problems in geometry, and practice speaking cuentos (stories) in Spanish. I also have to practice my violin for symphony as much and as often as possible. Not including music practice, homework takes about two hours or more a day. In physical fitness, if you are absent, you must make up the exercise on your own time (which would be a real challenge if a person was seriously sick or injured).

In high school, everything you do either makes you or breaks you. Starting now, every grade, every tardy, everything goes on your permanent record. This is stressful for me and probably for most of my classmates.

On the first day of school, several problems arose. I was late to my first class of the day, which is symphony orchestra, because the transfer bus to the high school was late. (In fact, the transfer bus was late or barely on time for the first two weeks.) I wasn’t able to get my instrument locker assignment because I was so late. I tried to get it at the end of the day, but was not able to. Adding insult to injury, I missed the bus after school.

My schedule was messed up, too. I met with my counselor an hour before the high school open house to fix the problems. He gave me the new schedule to follow, which I did. But unfortunately, the teachers didn’t know about the changes until the second week of school, so they had to mark me absent from the classes I wasn’t even supposed to be attending. Some days I felt invisible in the right classes since my name wasn’t on their lists.

By the end of the week, the assistant principal found me during lunch to ask why I was absent for part of every day, based on their paperwork. It was mortifying. Finally it was officially fixed, though.

There are good things about high school, too. I discovered that geometry is a lot of fun, and it is my favorite class next to symphony orchestra. Both teachers are so enthusiastic about what they teach; it is easy to love their classes.

After school, I have several hours of rehearsal for “Beauty and the Beast,” which the high school’s drama club is performing in November. I’ve enjoyed acting since I was six years old, so I definitely wanted to participate in theater guild. Learning choreography is hard work, but it’s also fun to work as a team with the other actors – and it’s good exercise, too.

I have also started to practice with Chelsea House Orchestra (CHO), which meets one evening a week. I love fiddle music – it is one of my favorite genres – and I love playing it even more. Practicing with the group was so much fun when I went for the first time last week. The songs are upbeat and have catchy melodies. The older players were very nice and helped me and my freshman friends adjust to the music.

All of the teachers are very nice and understanding from what I’ve seen so far. The administrators seem to really care about my well-being, and have helped me to handle the obstacles that have arisen.

Although I had some kind of problem every day for the first couple of weeks, all in all, I would say that my freshman year of high school is going to be all right.

And I expect it will get better every year, if what my older friends tell me is true.