The transition from middle school to high school is often daunting for incoming freshmen with all the new courses, increased coursework and a bigger campus to figure out. While there are several things new students stress about, here’s some information that can help with navigating those anxieties, as well as advice from the counselors about Rising Freshman Night, which is Feb. 11 from 5:30-7 p.m. at Emerson!
Managing Academics:
One of the biggest stressors behind high school is definitely the transition into more challenging classes. Currently, since all incoming freshmen have already turned in their course cards for the upcoming semester, it can help them plan for that transition. Knowing your classes and the varying degrees of difficulty can help you manage your study time.
For example, a lot of freshmen take AP Human Geography and sometimes feel overwhelmed with their first AP course. However, with good time management, that overwhelming feeling can instead shift into something more doable. In a list of tips to manage your time by College Board, the ones I found to be the most helpful personally were to make a to-do list and budget your time. Having a list makes it easier to keep track of what you’ve started, what you haven’t and maybe an assignment that completely slipped your mind! It’s a small trick but incredibly helpful. Budgeting your time is important because once you figure out how long it takes you to do certain tasks, it can help you create a schedule and keep track of when you’ll also be able to have free time.
Clubs:
Extracurriculars are a whole other important aspect of managing your time freshman year. These additional classes are often an enjoyable part of high school that provide students with new experiences. Some are more time-consuming than others, like athletics and band, so making sure you’re aware of the assignments you need to do while staying on top of your club work is important. This ties into the to-do list from the earlier point and having strong time management skills. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with homework alone, so having a list to follow and additional work from extracurricular activities can help prevent this. More tips can be found on The Princeton Review.
Counselor Information/Rising Freshman Night:
Organized mainly through the counselors, like Jami Manley and Head Counselor Leigh Casares, Rising Freshman Night is an event that invites current eighth graders to tour the school, meet teachers and learn about available extracurriculars. Students can also hear from speakers from organizations like Xello or from the Career and Technical Education counselor.
“Our CTE counselor will come over and talk about courses over at the CTE Center … the campus, how it’s beneficial to students to be in pathways,” Casares said. “We also have a speaker coming from Xello, which is our college and career platform. He’ll talk … about how to utilize that platform during [students’] high school career to do post-secondary college and career planning.”
Coming to Rising Freshman Night can also help with navigating the new school space. It can be stressful not knowing where things are, so it might give students peace of mind for their first day to know the layout. During this night, you can also ask any lingering questions you may have about courses to eliminate any doubts.
“It can be really, really overwhelming to pick pathways and feel like you’re not making a right choice or a wrong choice your freshman year,” Manley said. “This gives them the opportunity to maybe be exposed to things that they hadn’t considered, or things that they thought might be one thing, and then they hear from a teacher or a coach and it is not quite what they thought.”
Overall, keeping these tips in mind will help ease some of that freshman year stress! Make sure to branch out and figure out what specific strategies work for your brain to ensure success. Take a deep breath and you’ll do fine!
