Freshman Year Essay

Freshman Year Many if not all people change at one point or another during the course of their life. Majority of this change occurs during the high school years and even more specifically, freshman year. Many people associate the term “freshman” with being naive and asinine. However, in actuality during this period we as young adults are just attempting to find ourselves. “So much is still to be learned! So long a road lies before us, and what care we must take if we must travel it alone”(Rand 54). The development of a teen going through their high school years can be broken up into 3 stages; the beginning, the middle, and the end of the freshmen year.

When I first walked through the doors of Mill Creek I was the taciturn, vapid kid that did not want to do anything obstreperous. Before the school year started and I was fresh out of eight grade I thought that high school was going to be easy due to the fact I was on A; B honor role through out middle school. Therefore, I believed class was not going to be an issue and I was just going to breeze by freshmen year without responsibilities like I did every other grade level. “When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to the places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision”(Coelho 55). That decision I made to just breeze by put me on a current that took me places for the worst. My first math test was approaching rapidly and I barely knew the material, but because I was waking up at 5:50 every morning I was too tired to study.Consequently I failed that math test drastically. During the early stages of my high school career my study habits were not gratifying. The middle of my high school career was not much better in my maturity.

I was still adjusting to the high school life during the middle of my freshman year. i just had a realization that i had much more freedom than I had in middle school. The thrill of becoming more independent was great feeling but with freedom comes responsibility. Just as Shakespeare writes in Romeo and Juliet “Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast”(2.3.94). This quote expresses that if you rush things you can get yourself into tough situation. This is when i learned that time management would have to become something that I would have to learn quite quickly if I was going to graduate from freshmen year. For Example, i was absent from school for about 4 days in a row so as a result i had a ton of make-up work due in a short time on top of the work I had to do already. I had to manage my time to get my work done for the due date and because I managed my time well I completed all of my work. Another factor that affected my in my freshmen year was the fact that the people that I thought were my friends were changing. One of my closest friends and I got into an argument and almost fought in my first period, team sports. We have not talked that much or hung out since. This incident just made me a stronger individual. “You may write me down in history; with your bitter, twisted lies; you may trod me in the very dirt; But still, like dust, I’ll rise”(Maya Angelou: lines 1-4). The scars left behind are our only reminder of what we have achieved and earned through out our lives.

The last months of freshmen year was hard on many students including me my grades were all borderline and it was my last chance of bringing then up. I had already been through the lessons of time management and study skills so I was ready to study for these finals to bring my grades up. Towards the end of middle school when the representatives from high school came to talk to us everyone, including me did not take then seriously. I now know what they were trying to explain to us: that we had to put forth our best effort through out the entire year. The finals tested us as students just as the hunt tested Rainsford in The Most Dangerous Game. During finals week we had to use the skills we learned through out the year which were study skills, time management, and responsibility. All of those characteristics are not only useful during finals week but also useful in life.

As I progressed through my ninth grade year: the beginning, the middle, and the end I came across many obstacles that I have overcome That helped mold my character and who I am as of right now. Breezing through work was no longer an option I realized that I have to study and use my time wisely if i was going to be prosperous in the rest of my years in school. Freshmen year is an introduction of encountering hard time then overcoming them. It has also taught us to learn how to retain and use the knowledge we had received. Freshmen year in a subtle intro into the real world. Although leaving is sad to do as Romeo says in Romeo and Juliet it is necessary and the skills i learned in freshmen year will be with me the rest of my life.