The outer gates to your new high school are about to open, daring you to enter. You can feel your heart drumming with excitement and nervousness. Or maybe it’s more nervousness than excitement? Well, that all depends on how you take the situation. Beside you stands your resilient supporter, your father. He reassures you that high school is a huge leap of faith, and that with hardships come greatness. Many parents can use their personal experiences in high school to help younger generations. You sigh and take one last look at your past before entering the gates to your destiny.
Parents are key players in a teen’s role in accomplishing high school. For instance, Alan Evans is a father of two kids; one in elementary school and the other in high school. I asked him to provide information for teens who seek tips for their freshman year. “Oftentimes, I wanted to hang with cool kids, but they were way out of my league. Realizing who your real friends are is important and keeping them close is necessary.” It’s very important to know who your real friends are, and being true to yourself can steer teens away from becoming something that they’re not. Simply, you don’t have to be the most popular person in the school; find your place and stick to that.
Continuously, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask or receive help when you are trying to navigate your way through your new school. “Find an upperclassman who can help mentor you,” states Alan, “They can help you view high school differently than the other newbies.” You walk around the closing halls, trying to find your math class, when an upperclassman approaches you, asking you if you need any help getting around. It’s better to let a more experienced high schooler help you than another newbie because they are new as well. Plus, the upperclassman has been around longer and has better knowledge of the school’s grounds. You smile and say, “Sure, that would be great,” and you two roam off to find your classroom.
Additionally, when talking to others and roaming around halls, you can’t always expect to receive true information, and you will most likely make mistakes. But learning from these mistakes can be beneficial to your high school experience, meaning that it can help you in the future. “The best lesson that I learned in high school was being a team player. As well as making the most out of your time to focus on your career.” Lots of people are afraid of making the wrong move, reverting to you having to ask for help around the halls, what if those upperclassmen weren’t there to help you? Sometimes, making the wrong move can increase your chances of making the right decision in the future.
Now, you finally find your math class, but it turns out you were late. Your teacher yells at you in front of the whole class, you can hear people laughing and giggling, making your face go hot. “A bad day in high school for me was being bullied and laughed at for being less popular.” A bad day can be built from the smallest things, whether it’s due to bullying, failing a test, or even getting yelled at by teachers, bad days are known to come in a high schooler’s life, if not anyone’s life. You shouldn’t get down on yourself when you have a bad day, though; many other bright days are known to come in the following presence. “Getting through a bad day shapes your mind, not your character.”
It’s the end of the day, and you finally make it out of the eye of the storm. You begin to think back on how that upperclassman helped you find your class. It was almost as scary as when your teacher began yelling at you. Or how being the most popular kid in school isn’t everything that you might want in the world. I approach my father, standing at the same spot that I had left to enter school. He smiles and says, “Small steps towards big dreams start today”.
