Musings of a High School Neophyte

By Georgia Schreiner


 

The end of the quarter has come.

 

Not only does this mark the first of many, ever-dreaded and extremely painful “Grade Talks” with your parents (who of course will never understand you), or a glorious checkpoint that you are a quarter way closer to lying on the sand in your brand new bikini, slurping frappés served to you by the overly kind employees of Bali’s finest resort hotel, or maybe it means nothing to you. Whatever the significance, we can all agree that it most importantly represents that the cute little freshmen (that’s me), who huddle together during break, are already 6.25% through our high school career.

 

When asking others, I found that most everyone was shocked to hear that the end of the first quarter had already arrived. The young and chipper Ethan Henderson, brother to less young and less chipper Haiden Henderson, said that it had gone by fast, and though high school had originally been somewhat intimidating, the support of friends this first quarter has given him a new confidence. Freshmen Treasurer Haleigh Loomis reflected that this first quarter has opened both her world view and her heart to the new and diverse community that is Villanova. I like to put it this way when speaking with members of the freshmen class, whatever you have experienced in the past two months, everything that has happened, you can only do fifteen more times, ever.

 

My peers described to me the things that they viewed as key in their first quarter of high school. Sydney Roe reflected that being in a sport had been a great transition for her, especially since she had just moved here, and had connected her to many new people. Jamison Lerma (that one tall freshmen that you’ve been wondering about) said that the thing that was really key for him this past quarter was all his friends. I think that the subject of friends has been resting in the back of our minds. While all the sophomores and upperclassmen are havin’ fun, going into another year of high school, the poor little freshmen brains have been scrambled and fried as they ponder on questions like: Who are my friends? Who do I want to be my friend? Are we allowed to be friends with the upperclassmen? Can’t we all just be friends?

 

This quarter has been our first quarter of attempting to figure out high school. After the many hours spent watching high school movies, the countless more fantasizing about high school days and those “completely accurate” John Green books explaining to us exactly how high school works, we are finally here.