How bad/good will my first year of high school?

Yeah, I am going to be a freshman in high school in about 15 days. How bad/good will the first year be? Is it as bad as some people put it? I'm wondering whether or not I should be nervous and stuff.

Thanks!

 

It all depends on what you make of it.

If you sit alone, don't make friends, etc. then you're going to have a terrible time. You need to get out there, step out of your comfort zone, and make a ton of friends. It's easy to make a lot of friends during the first few weeks before "cliques" form and people already have a close group of friends.

Make friends, party hard, do well in your classes, and high school will be a fucking blast.

 

This. There's alot of pressure on you out of highschool so have fun while your there

 

I personally hated high school. I had a lot of friends, but for me it was super easy and therefore super boring. I never worked at high school but passed with around a 3.37.

My freshman year I went in really shy, but my older cousin already had a ton of friends who were older than both of us and so he introduced me. So I kind of got out of my shyness, and then he left and all of my older friends graduated and I made new friends because I didn't give a fuck about talking to people I didn't know. Now I make new friends like every semester in college because I can strike up a conversation with anyone about nearly anything. Learning to be a good conversationalist is a great life skill.

 

Nah, you will fit in with the rest of the freshmen. Nothing to be nervous about.

 

There's nothing to be nervous about. High school for me was actually so easy. I would very often skip school. People always thought I would fail and the administration would always threaten me with kicking me out. Other students were surprised when they would see me with better marks than them. My belief when it came to school is that attendance doesn't mean shit if you attend but don't do your work. I didn't attend school much but when it was time to work, I worked harder than others but even then things were generally just too easy.

Things are laid back as fuck, just enjoy yourself but don't fuck up. It's not the same once you're done with high school.

I also want to warn you of drugs... drugs will be present throughout high school. Do not give in to peer pressure and don't get into anything until later in high school when you are a bit older (and I'm just talking about weed, don't ever get into the hardcore drugs... you'll fuck your life up)

For your first year, just be outgoing and talk to people if you're going into a school you know no one in. Try to make friends before people form 'cliques'.

EDIT: I'm from the province of Quebec in Canada. We have College after High School and before University so it didn't make a "difference" if you fucked around in high school. In college, your marks stick with you forever and haunt you if you do poorly.

 

I didn't study once my entire time in high school. I figured what we learned in class would be good enough to cover me for any tests/exams, and luckily I passed everything (though not perfect heh). Once I got into university I regret that because of how easy it is to study high school stuff compared to what I'm studying now, and how much higher the scholarships could have been if I only put a little bit more effort in.

So, STUDY. It's easy material, and you don't need to spend a lot of time on it, but it will help you get better scholarships and get into the university/college you really want to get in to. Start early so you keep a high GPA.

 

High school wasn't great for me, but it wasn't crap either. Sort of average if you like.

All that's (career-wise) going to matter when you finish school is your grades. So for gods sake, work hard and study. There will probably be a lot of times where you'll hate high school and don't wanna be there anymore, but it will pay off in the end and you'll have yourself to thank for it.

 

Yep, as already stated, you should probably be social so this doesn't happen.

 

High school will be what you make of it, if you try to have fun, you will. If not, then you will have a bad time.

 

I just graduated! I promise it goes by fast and it really isn't that bad as you think it is

 

to be honest highschool is either terrible or fun depending on who you end up joining in the clique wars. Obviously in popularity terms you're less likely to be fucked with if you sell out and hang around whomever your peers consider "cool" but if your school was anything like mine by junior year all of the trolls will have grown up and people tend to be more courteous to each other. My advice is hang out with the intelligent people. I don't necessarily mean the people in calc ab freshman year I mean the people who you can have actual intelligent opinionated conversations with. Personally I started to grow away from some of my friends who were part of the "cool" clique at the start of sophomore year because I couldn't talk with them like an adult. At the end of senior year you will realize that the people who hate you will probably never see you again and you will see how little highschool means in the long run.

If it doesn't go well in high school just know that in college you will meet people who will truly get you and you will feel part of a community for once.

 

I hated high school.

 

You should try to do well your freshmen year. I bombed my freshmen year and I spent my next 3 years trying to bring up my GPA.

 

High School was freaking awesome. I miss it so much. I was more of a lone wolf in high school, but everyone knew my name. That tends to happen when you're smarter than 99 percent of your graduating class, though.

So usually it'd be the pretty girls asking me to do their work for them, aka use me...or the jocks asking for the same treatment. I don't really fit your prototypical nerd archetype though, so I could get by.

They dubbed my high school "The Pharmacy" --- there were so many drug addicts and dealers in my HS. We had a lot of affluent snotty kids that got bored and did all kinds of hard drugs. So be weary of that, there are going to be people trying to get you into that shit.

If you like sports, get into a sport. That basically helped me show that I was not a complete academic nerd/outcast. You meet a lot of cool people in sports & clubs, and hopefully you really hit the jackpot and meet some pretty girls too while you do that .

 

The best advice I have is to just be yourself and be confident. The rest will fall together.

 

It all depends on what you make of it and who you're around. Try to make a lot of friends right off the bat before everyone starts forming their little circles of close friends. But DO NOT BE AFRAID to let those friends go if you end up not really liking them. High school is a time when a lot of people start doing really stupid things, and some of your "friends" will probably try to pressure you into doing things you don't want to do. Just don't do those things and leave those people behind. Believe it or not, in a few years, those "friends" will mean literally nothing to you anymore. It will probably feel like these people are the world to you, but recognizing that they aren't and that they are just temporary parts of your life will greatly benefit you in the event you start off being close friends with people who go really downhill.


As you progress through high school and you watch people change, hang around with the people who are smart, successful, and determined. The people you are around greatly influence who you are as a person. Even if the “cool kids” say they’re nerds, it doesn’t matter. These nerds are the ones who are going to have the highest chance of becoming incredibly successful people in the future, and being close to them in high school will be good for your development and can potentially help you start a network of successful people (which will be very important in college and beyond). On the other hand, those “cool kids” aren’t going anywhere for the most part. And believe it or not, it’s the “nerds” who end up becoming cool later and who people start looking up to.


Stay away from drugs and alcohol. Period. You are too young to form rational and logical decisions about these sorts of choices, and it’s best to just avoid them entirely for now (don’t believe me? The prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully develop until the mid-twenties for females, and late-twenties for males. The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that is most involved with making rational and logical decisions.) There will be plenty of time when you are older to experiment a little if you want, but leave it for college and beyond. These substances will only distract you from doing your best and you will risk getting addicted to them, hanging out with a bad crowd, hurting your studies, and digging yourself into a ditch that you will literally never be able to get out of for the rest of your life.


Focus on your studies. Believe it or not, high school does largely determine the rest of your life. The economy isn't super awesome now of days, and if you have the capability to get into a really nice college, go for it. It will make getting an excellent job so much easier. Unlike the friends you make in high school, studies cannot be "left behind" without consequences. I know it's hard to see how important they are at this point in life, but trust me. Depending on your financial situation, you might be thinking that it doesn't matter since the really nice colleges are too expensive. In actuality, that's not true. The really good colleges have an incredibly large amount of money that they give to really hard working, talented, involved students which often makes them a lot cheaper than going somewhere else. (I’m middle class with almost a full ride to one of these universities. Unless you’re pretty rich, you won’t be paying much. And if you are rich, you can afford it. So it isn’t an issue.)


Get involved. Sports, clubs (ones where you actually do things), music, theater, whatever. Just do stuff you like to do. And shoot for leadership positions. But again, make sure those leadership positions are ones where you actually do something.


Your goal is to be a student with great grades, upper level courses, lots of meaningful extra-curricular involvement, and worthwhile friends (smart, responsible, driven, and successful).


So many people will tell you that you have to be “smart” to do well in classes, or that you don’t really have to go to a great school to get great jobs. Both of these have some amount of truth in them, but are largely false.


IQ, or whatever other means you measure intelligence with, are incredibly flawed. People do well in classes for one of two reasons usually: they already know the material well, or they work hard and spend a lot of time studying. The people in the first group will have an advantage in high school and the beginning of college, but that’s it. They will stop having an advantage after that because there gets to be a point in school where things get hard. Really hard. And nobody is good at it in advance. The key to succeeding is a hard work ethic and having the determination to succeed. If you have that, you will be just fine.


As for the second issue, not needing to go to a great school to get a great job, well of course it’s possible. But it’s unlikely. Think of it in terms of probabilities. You want to secure for yourself the greatest probability of success. In the long run, that is what will help you the most. Working very hard in high school, getting into an excellent college, and continuing to work hard will make it much more likely that you will get an amazing job that pays a lot (i.e. $100,000+ a year starting salary), is challenging and rewarding, has lots of exit opportunities so you can explore other careers and not get stuck doing something you hate for the rest of your life or risk getting laid off with no ability to go anywhere else. It will also pretty much guarantee that you will get a good job (Average salary or higher) without having to worry about competition. In other words, it is highly unlikely that you will go to a great college, graduate, and end up working at McDonalds or Starbucks unless you seriously screw around during college. All of these benefits mean you will be less likely to worry about debt, making bill payments, being unemployed, and working late into your life. They give you a lot of flexibility and freedom, and it’s critical to understand how valuable that is. And your key for securing those benefits starts now, in high school.


Good luck, and have fun! Oh, and challenge yourself. You should take advanced courses or AP courses. So many people I knew in high school didn’t take them because they thought they weren’t good enough to take these courses. Again, people don’t do well in those classes just because they’re “smart”. They do well because they work hard and study hard. Don’t be afraid of those classes. You need to take them if you want to get into a great college. They are a lot of work, but they end up being really fun once you get used to them.

 

Make sure you dont become that loner that no one wants to be. This is the period where you obtain social skills.

 

It's natural to be nervous, but you shouldn't worry because it's probably not going to be what you expected (unless you try really hard to get a certain outcome). Your gonna meet assholes and you're going to be meet plenty of great people; make sure you're careful of who your friends are.
Enjoy the time you spend there as much as you can, and if you have a goal for where you'd like to be before or after you graduate, then work to do everything you can to realize it. The last thing you want is regret.

 

My first high school year was okay. You should try to be open with yourself because mostly you make most of your friends in year one. Well for me it was my first year and I didn't really make a lot of friends after besides joining sports. Joining sports made me meet new people from different schools and meet other people from different grades.