A Freshman’s Perspective on her First Week at Dublin High School

Alex in Front of Dublin High

I made a fabulous first impression on my first day of high school: I was not late to first period – almost. You would think that arriving an hour before school started would give me enough time to get my picture taken and then find my classes. Unfortunately, half of the school also had a similar train of thought, so things didn’t exactly go as I had planned. For instance, I was apparently not supposed to save the I-Finished-the-Paperwork-Online receipt, but to have it with me, as well. Long story short, I almost tortured my dad before his morning coffee.  I was lucky to escape in one piece.

The rest of the day went more smoothly. I will admit, however, that I had a few more false starts. This included circling a building several times, before realizing that I was looking for a classroom that didn’t actually exist.  And, being extremely pleased with myself to be on time, for once, I found that I might have overdone it a bit; I was one period too early.

It was also nice to know that seniors could pick the freshmen out of a crowd: we were short (most of us anyways), overly confident, moving in packs…and were completely lost. A committee went out of their way to make us feel more comfortable by giving my friends and me a formal welcome as they honked at us from their cars on their way out to lunch.

Day two was much better. Not only did we have homework, but we had our first math test as well.  All I can vouch for is that I finished. I also discovered that most of the sophomores and upperclassmen were not as, let’s say, scary, as they had seemed the day before.  But, they were actually nice and very generous with their directions.

Friday was my favorite day of the week because it was Friday and I had a three-day weekend coming up. Also because I was starting to look forward to my classes, I met a lot of new people that I never would have gotten to know otherwise (in the near future anyways) or because they were in a different grade or came from a different middle school.

By the end of my first week at DHS, I liked high school.  It was very chaotic and different. And sure, the teachers expected a lot more from you, but with those expectations come a greater level of freedom. And that is greatly valued.

Editors Note:  Alexandra is a newly minted 9th grader at DHS that promoted up from Wells Middle School.  Ms. Stassinopoulos previously documented the Wells 8th grade trip to Washington D.C. in a series of articles earlier this year (read more…).  She intends to chronicle her high school odyssey and to share her observations at Dublin High School for OneDublin.org.