Freshmen Are Ridiculous

Freshmen are ridiculous. 

The whole rest of the school can’t stand them, and seeing as I live under the same roof as one, it’s not very hard to see why.

They used to be the top dogs, eighth graders, cream of the crop, and they just got shoved down to the bottom of the totem pole.  That’s a difficult transition, for sure, but who hasn’t faced a little adversity?

So what if everyone is bigger and stronger and more menacing looking than you? That’s life.  You’ve got to be the bigger person: suck it up, slump your shoulders, bow your head and scurry down the halls like the world implodes if you’re tardy.  At least for the first quarter. 

I was a freshman once and I distinctly remember doing exactly that.  I acted the part of the timid fourteen year old thrust into the world of facial hair and homework on the weekends, because I was terrified.  Here were these packs of gargantuan beasts lumbering through the halls a head above my tallest friends, and gaggles of perfectly primped and polished girls pointing and giggling in the locker bays. And then there was me: number two pencils and a canvas rucksack, desperately trying to find G203. 

Eventually I started to let myself get comfortable, and slowly but surely I began talking to friends in class, taking some liberties with homework deadlines, and lingering a little in the halls.  But that was a ways away from day one, halfway through the second quarter at least. 

Freshmen right now are so ready to fit in, to look and act just like everyone else, that they equate the upperclassmen’s comfort in their environment to complete obnoxiousness.  They run through the halls, yelling friends names interspersed with profanity.  They whip out their phones, Twitter feed at the ready, the second their teachers turn their backs. 

But the worst is the crowds outside the main office every morning.  I mean, really? Do you have to stand right there, gabbing it up with the entire class of 2016, for twenty minutes? Yeah, it’s a great place to meet up with friends before you go your separate ways, but I’ve got places to be in the morning, too.  I don’t have time to push my way through a crowd of animated hand gestures ten deep. 

But despite everything I’ve just said, I don’t hate freshmen.  They’re human beings, just like the rest of us.  My brother is a freshman, and despite the general annoyances that come with siblinghood, he’s a pretty great guy.  I even like his friends… for the most part.  No, what I hate is what the freshmen represent.  Over the years, their reputation has molded them, shaped them into the monsters they now are. 

They’ve been given the idea that all freshmen are loathed, despised so wholly and completely that nothing they do could would ever change that fact.  This is not the case.  Sure, there are the occasional jerks who hate freshmen just because they can, but most of the people I’ve met don’t judge based on class. 

So freshman, take the hint, it’s not you we don’t like, it’s the way you act.  Mellow out, and as my ninth grade English teacher would say: ‘act your age, not your shoe size.’ Do this, and you’ll be golden. 

Thatnerdychic :]