Grade 9.
People’s best opportunity to make fun of your tininess when you’re getting pushed around in the hallway, laugh at your lack of ability to open a lock (“wait, this isn’t even my locker, is it?”) and observe your complete confusion as to where your classes are. It can be a scary and unpredictable year, especially if you don’t have any older sibling to turn to, where it is easy to just believe every high school stereotype you see in movies.
So understand; this won’t be anything like High School Musical, Clueless or The Breakfast Club. You are not Sharpay Evans, and there are no pink lockers at this school.
After finishing, more like surviving, my grade 9 year I have compiled a list of must-know facts for those kids who were just as clueless as I was. I wish upon you a year of discovering new friends, the trick to good marks and, most importantly, a little bit about yourself.
1 . Seniors are not evil. Yes, they are giant and yes, they might have beards, piercings or tattoos, but they were freshmen at one point too. A lot of them are actually really cool people, that actually don’t care about the age gap as much as you think they would. When you think about it, your parent’s friends are never the exact same age as they are, so why should your’s be?
Having older kids as friends is also really beneficial to learn about which teachers and classes to avoid and to hear about other school events that you’d should watch out for. I am in a guitar class last period, and it is my only class that had kids from all grades. Not only are the seniors the funniest, yet most talented, kids in the class, they are also always looking to be friends with the kids from other grades.
So next time you see a senior, don’t hide in your locker and avoid eye contact. Your possible-friend-detector should be dinging!
2 . Don’t always stick to what you know. Coming from a smaller elementary school, everyone was pretty tight knit. So naturally, when high school came along with all the new kids that I didn’t know, I was totally happy with just sticking with my old friends from grade 8. It is definitely the safer option, but not always the one that will benefit you most in the future.
What I found was that I was purposely sitting besides them in class and only doing my group assignments with them. I’m a pretty introverted person, so this was the option that kept me feeling the most comfortable. What sucks about doing this is that they is a 99% chance that there is someone else in that class who would actually be a better fit for you than they are, and you are completely blocking yourself off from them. Mingle, socialize, talk with new people every once in a while, who knows when the right person will come along?
3 . Joining teams is actually worth it. You’d think that having every adult telling us to “join school teams!” would be enough motivation to do it, but most of them time we right this advice off as cliche and irrelevant. Don’t do it, they are on to something!
Not only does joining sports teams get you moving instead of sitting in your bed at home, it is the perfect, and I mean perfect time to meet new people. Not only will these people have a common interest as you already, a lot of the time they are people you wouldn’t really see otherwise. Throwback to point number 1, these people may also be older than you, which you now know can be a good thing.
Highschool really makes this step easy because they usually have tons of sports teams ranging from volleyball, to soccer, to badminton, to even wrestling. My all time favorite sports team is my schools swim team, because not only is it an everbody-qualifies-for-the-team-instantly team, it also isn’t as crazy popular as soccer or basketball.
4 . Express what you love. In elementary school, I always found it pretty hard to share my interests because it was really hard to find someone else that had the same ones. In highschool, though, there are so many kids that at least 1 of them has to be a die-hard Lumineer’s fan too! Holding back is actually not good at all, because it is those unique interest that will lead you towards the truest, bestest (?) friends that you may ever meet. So next time you are talking in the cafeteria, share your love for Dylan O’Brien loud and proud. It will be good in the future, don’t worry.
5 . Give it time. Your dream job won’t pop out to you as soon as you walk into English class, and your best friend won’t magically pop up beside your locker. These things take time, and lots and lots of patience. You have 4 years, no matter how quickly they fly by, to work things out. Don’t stress out, but constantly take extra steps to find these things. Sitting back and giving up will get you nothing (except maybe a few extra pounds if there is icecream nearby).
Onto some more acedemically-focused tips…
6. Exams are now a thing, so better notes should be too. When you find yourself at the end of the semester studying for your exams, the last thing you want to see are pages upon pages of boring notes. Make ’em something a little easier on the eyes (and brain) by keeping them down to the bare-minimum and spicing them up with diagrams, arrows/small doodles, highlighters and cool titles. You don’t get a lot of time for notes in class though so unless you are planning to rewrite your notes at home (so much extra work!!), you really got to work this down to a science.
I am writing a post right now about how to write better notes, definitley something you want to look into!
7. Find the pros of the class. Studying can’t be all done on your own. You need friends to quiz you, tell you what they are studying, and help you if you are falling behind. This involves finding the students who are either at the same level than you or better, so get out there and find them! I promise they will help your grade a lot! (And, 9 times out of 10, they will surprise you by how cool they are once you look past the ‘smart person’ label that everyone pins onto them.)
8. Understand your teacher. These are the people who are going to be marking all of your work, so it’s smart to try and cater your work to what you know they want to hear. One of my biggest mottos during highschool is to work smart, not hard. Your goal for every assignment, test answer and essay should be to get your best answer across in as few words as possible. Teachers have the special skill of looking past all of your fluffy repeating sentences to see that you really are just skirting around answering, whether it be through 20 pages or 2 paragraphs.
EDIT: I have officially just walked out of my last exam, and I ran home to add in this last point about grade 9. As cheesy as it sounds, enjoy it as fully as you possibly can. It truly does fly by just like they say it does.
EDIT #2: I sit here now, December 17th, 2017, and shake my head at how long it took me to finally publish this post. The only valuable point that I have to add as a 10th grader is that it is never too late to use these points. They are your Highschool do-more-than-just-survive-during-some-of-the-most-crucial-deciding-years-of-your-life List. All that I can say now is good luck.
A la prochaine,
Iz.
The Bashful Brunette 