Kristen
Compared to my first year of high school, I definitely felt more confident walking back on campus. I knew the campus well enough to know my way around all the alphabetically named buildings, and I saw familiar faces wherever I walked.
I’m Kristen, and not too long ago, I started my sophomore year in high school.
Compared to my first year of high school, I definitely felt more confident walking back on campus. I knew the campus well enough to know my way around all the alphabetically named buildings, and I saw familiar faces wherever I walked. Unlike my freshman year, full of uncertainties and worries about getting lost and adjusting to high school life, I felt comfortable at school this year.
With the new school year came the inevitable dread of monotonous class periods and relentless homework loads, exams and presentations. My high school has a block schedule, meaning that each class meets fewer times a week but for longer periods each time. For students, it means grueling sessions packed with tight schedules, but more time to complete homework assignments and projects. It was honestly one of the hardest things for me to adjust to last year. I got restless sitting in the same seat for up to an hour and twenty minutes. Because of the schedule, students sometimes even had to take multiples quizzes and learn material all in the same class period.
However, the excitement of reuniting with friends eased with slow burn of anxiety that I usually experience during the last week of summer. For me, the first two days of school are strangely exhilarating. I get to catch up on all the summer adventures that my friends have had, and meet all of the teachers that I’ll be learning from throughout the year. I have new classes, and a new schedule with different friends.
This first semester of school I’m taking seven classes: Trigonometry, Literary Style, Beginning Journalism, Chinese 2, Chemistry, Physical Education, and United States Government. The class that I was most excited to take this semester was Beginning Journalism since I enjoy writing as a hobby. So far, the teacher seems really nice, and I really look forward to joining the school newspaper, The Oracle, next semester. As for the class that I’m dreading the most, it would probably have to be either Physical Education or Trigonometry. All of my friends know of my unathleticism and hatred for math. Running the mile is extremely stressful to me. A lot of people I complain about the mile to always call me silly for worrying over something as small and trivial as running the mile, but I can’t seem to help it! As for math, I have always struggled with math, and numbers have never been something that speak to me the way that letters do.
Our school has several different quads that all of the different classes sit at. There’s the freshman quad, a large, grassy area shaded by a large oak tree, the sophomore quad, a small boxy area sandwiched by one end of the school theater and the Student Activities Center (SAC), the junior quad, which doesn’t really exist but seems to be located around the cafeteria, and the senior quad, another boxy area by the other side of the SAC. There aren’t any rules that state that members from each class have to eat at each of their respective quads, but at my high school that is the unspoken norm. At the beginning of the school year I kept going back to the freshman quad during brunch, a little break in the morning between classes, and lunch because I kept forgetting that new freshman were sitting there. So far I’m not a big fan of the sophomore quad just because of how much smaller it is, but I think that as the year goes on I’ll begin to like it more and more.
