Dear Freshmen,

Over the past four years, high school has caused my life to be a rollercoaster of emotions in many different parts of my life. I am writing to let you know that there are things that are going to happen in your life that are inevitable, but there are ways to avoid them bringing you down too much. I am here to help you out with these parts of your life.

Let’s start with the basics.

We all know how painful it can be to have five hours of homework in one night because both your English and history teachers seem to think that their classes are the only classes that you attend throughout your day. Two essays and six chapters of reading in one night between just those two classes? That is crazy! How could a teacher expect so much from you? Let me tell you, coffee became my best friend as the four years went on. I was drinking four cups during a day just to get through school and then another one after dinner just to be able to stay up until 4 am and finish those essays and chapters of my book. Procrastination was my biggest enemy. Start your assignments early because you’ll think back to this when you’re sitting at the end of your senior year with your senior project coming up in two weeks and you haven’t started yet; you’ll understand what I meant. It’ll help so much more in the long run.

Friendships will be one of the hardest parts of your life over the course of these next few years. I have changed friend groups multiple times since my first day of freshman year. Now, keep in mind that I transferred schools right before my junior year so I had the jump to a whole new grade of more than 400 kids. It was a tough switch. It took weeks before I was able to find a core group of friends to hang out with, but all of that time waiting was well worth it because of the people I have in my life now. It’s hard to think about how you’ll split apart from your friends throughout high school. You think there is no way that can happen if you’re all in the same school and see each other every day, but it’s hard to stay close with everyone when you’re all stuck at 3 in the morning doing those projects all the time. Accept this inevitable fact and you’ll be a lot happier with the people you become close with, I promise.

High school isn’t terrible. It’s actually quite fun if you make it fun. It will be stressful but if you work hard and take time for yourself every once in a while, I promise these really will be the best four years of your life.