Freshmen confused, anxious about their academic roadmap – and if they have a destination.
By: Aiden Fiore
8th Graders in Avalon were plagued with existentialism when their final days in middle school loomed. Worrying about what exactly an AP class entailed, how they were going to obtain their scholarship – questioning the pathway to their ideal adult life. All of these questions racing and pestering the minds of Middle School Seniors at the young age of thirteen. With those kids now attending Timber Creek, their taste of high school has some more clueless than when they began.
“It’s hard for me to not feel like a failure,” says Amelia O’Brien, a Timber Creek freshman. Though her all-A grades stand exceptionally praiseworthy, she has found the stresses of school work increasingly detrimental to her mental health as the days pass by. With a vague ambition for a psychiatric position paired with a lack of knowledge on what classes to settle in if she were to procure such an occupation, pressures from multiple private and public aspects of her life have made her feel cornered. A majority of 9th grade students share such academic stresses at Timber Creek, let alone within the United States as a whole. “The crippling weight put on me makes me cry some afternoons,” said O’Brien.
Mental issues such as depression have a range of causes – such a complicated illness couldn’t be coalesced into one source. With that mentioned, the weight of a freshman’s future is often linked to mental illness. High school is occasionally the primary factor of a freshman’s tension, but it may add onto stress procured from home. This isn’t an issue unique to freshmen. According to the Discovery Mood & Anxiety program, depression among teens has been increasing for the past several years.
Some freshmen remain calm. Not many aspects of school life get under their skin, but they still remain indeterminate on what exactly they want their life to be after the four years of Timber Creek they’ll have come to an end. Logan Nieves, a freshman at Timber Creek, says he wants to do “something in engineering,” As of late, the amount of homework culminated from his classes have prohibited him from pondering on the subject of career. “[I] don’t really know. I’m taking IED, and might continue to take it next year.”
It comes down to the authorities within Timber Creek. The affairs and problems of freshman and high schoolers as a whole is acknowledged in the Department of Education’s ranks. There could be change from the top to help freshmen clarify the superficial chaos of their first and assist in choosing the path they want to tread, or we may have to rely on those in Student Government or the politically active to represent students. Until there’s action, freshmen and other students struggling with difficulties resulting from worries of their long-term future may have to simply hope they’re treading the right path – and they don’t have regrets when they enter their senior years.