Freshmen students explain the difference between their middle school years, and high school so far…
By Sasha Khan
Dress codes, phone rules, designated lunch tables. What do all of these things have in common? They’re all things that middle school had that high school doesn’t! Regardless of your experiences in either school, I think we can all agree that high school is incredibly different from middle school. For a second, forget the coronavirus existed. Even without being in the middle of a crazy pandemic, freshmen are finding that high school is a huge jump from middle school. After interviewing a couple students, including freshmen Sophia Ferrara and Addison Alsip, incoming news sources say that middle school couldn’t be more different from high school, and even just a year of high school has changed us in ways we didn’t see coming.
Even though I mentioned that without the pandemic, high school and middle school are more different than they are alike, I feel like it’s still important to discuss it, because whether we like it or not, it happened. COVID 19 made it so that half of the freshmen that were going to start attending Timber Creek in August of 2020 haven’t so much as stepped foot on campus. For those that have, most classrooms have half the number of students they normally have and masks have become mandatory. One thing that all my teachers have said, that I think is so true, is that people look so different without their mask on. If you had told me a year ago that a strip of cloth over someone’s face could’ve caused me to accidentally overlook my friend of 5 years, I would’ve laughed in your face. But believe it or not, seeing someone new without their mask makes them almost unrecognizable, and the same applies to seeing a close friend whose face you could pick out from a crowd anyday. Besides the obvious, learning during a pandemic is incredibly different. It doesn’t matter if you’re at home, doing all of your classes in bed, or at school, with four other people in your classroom, school has been weird this year.
Sophia Ferrara is a freshman, new to Timber Creek this year. In terms of how the coronavirus affected the year so far, she explained, “Of course learning and teaching methods are different, but since high school learning is all around different from that of middle school, you can’t miss what you never had. I’ve never had the full ‘high school learning’ experience, so I don’t know what it’s actually like.” I think her use of the quote “you can’t miss what you never had” is important in this conversation, because she brings up a good point: Freshman students have never experienced “normal” high school, so they have nothing to compare their year to. She talked about how teachers in high school were a lot more chill, and let a lot more slide than teachers in middle school but “it just doesn’t feel as if it would be so different if Covid didn’t exist. Maybe certain classes would be, but not freshman year as a whole.” This is not the answer I was expecting, because many other students I’ve talked to admit that school this year doesn’t feel nearly the same as normal, but again, it all comes down to how “you can’t miss what you never had”. When asked what the biggest difference was between high school and middle school, in her opinion, Ferrara said, “If I could say one thing, it is that all of the other kids around you mind their own business.” She goes on to give examples of this, such as how kids can express themselves with clothes, and makeup with judgement. In terms of something she liked about high school more than middle school, she said, “I like that in high school there is just so much more freedom than in middle school.” She also added, “Teachers in high school as a whole are just more aware of your struggles as a student and they are more kind and understanding. It’s not that the teachers in middle school weren’t, it’s just that the teachers in high school create an all around better environment or vibe.” On the other hand, she said that there was nothing in mind when asked what she liked about middle school more than high school. Ferrara also answered, “…this year I have definitely tried to better balance my obligations, which has helped me a lot. Not to mention, there isn’t as much that I feel inclined to do…”, when I asked her in which school did she have more free time (with nothing school related involved). She added, “When it comes to homework, in highschool I definitely have a lot less. There have been some nights where I feel like I’m forgetting something and I completely stress myself out trying to remember what it is because I’m so unfamiliar with the concept of having so little or nothing to do.” She said that her mental health has been better this year in terms of school has been really good. In response to the question of how she’s changed since middle school, Ferrara replied, “I have begun to learn that some things are more important than grades and that although you should try in every class, some of them create a toxic thought process in your head and sometimes there’s only so much you can care and only so much you can give to those classes. Not only that, I’ve been through a lot and I’ve learned that you can’t keep toxic friendships in your life or that it isn’t worth it to keep people in your life that give you stress or are still trying to find themselves/mature if that is impacting you.” She also answered, “High school has definitely had a better impact on my mental health than middle school. Even though you are held accountable for more and are expected to be more independent, the workload is definitely less (in freshman year, at least) and for most classes you are given a longer amount of time to complete assignments.” She included the fact that teachers really care about your mental health in high school and try to cause the least amount of stress possible. Ferrara said that she would want to tell a lot of things to her past self, but the important one is “Mainly it would be just to not push yourself too much. You’re going to do it anyway, but just go in with that mindset.”
Addison Alsip, another freshman, also had some interesting answers for these questions. The difference between her and Ferrara is that she’s a full-time online student this year. In fact she said, “I’m a launched student due to overall anxiety with COVID, and it has been very different from going to school in person, in both negative and positive ways.” She said that highschool has been very fast paced, which she likes because she can be independent but the workload has been a lot, which is understandable. She explained that she liked that high school more because she got to “experience some career choices” and learn more about things that would help her outside of high school, but middle school was “much less strict than high school and had a lot less homework.” Her personal experience with both schools was that in middle school, things were stress-free and in high school, there’s more that impacts her future. When asked what school has had more free time in, she answered, “Definitely middle school.” She also added, “I feel that I have matured a lot since middle school, and I take things a lot more seriously. I spend less time worrying about drama and things that honestly don’t matter that much, and put more time into my work and making sure I was responsible.” A lot of kids’ mental health struggles have differentiated between the two schools and Alsip was no exception to that. She said, “Middle school affected my mental health in a way that I was worried mostly about my friendships, school plays, and what drama was going on. That perspective has entirely changed since then, for now I’m constantly worrying about deadlines, homework, and projects, and can’t be fully relaxed without knowing I have everything done.” She would tell her middle school self not to worry about petty drama, and with that, I have to agree! She gave a bit of a personal answer to the last question, which was asking how her dream and aspirations changed since middle school. She responded, “…I thought I wanted to be a dermatologist when I was in middle school, but over time I realized that that wasn’t what I was really passionate about, and I am now exploring different careers to figure out what I really want to do. In terms of relationships, I’d also say that I want to try and make more friends and get closer to the ones I have. I want to try and be more social and stop worrying about judgement so often.”
Personally, I have different answers to some of these questions than my friends. I will say that Ferrara’s answer to the first question was something that I agreed with. You can’t miss what you never had, but a lot of my older friends told me a lot about high school, and so I had expectations about it that weren’t met simply because of the pandemic. For me personally, the biggest difference between high school and middle school is the amount of work. I thought I had a lot of work in eighth grade but for the past six months I’ve been doing homework from the second I get home from school right up until I have to go to bed. I barely have time for my personal life and I find that when I do have that rare moment of free time, I don’t know what to do with it, because I’m not used to it. I really love the independence in high school and how you’re expected to be in charge of yourself, but in middle school, everything was so much more chill since, unless you were taking an honors course, nothing was marked on your permanent record. I feel that quarantine has changed me so much that quarantine itself was a different experience between middle school and high school. I definitely had more free time in middle school because, while I was stretching myself tight with every after school activity under the sun, I still had less homework, and so that resulted in more personal time for myself. I think that I’ve become better at managing my workload, but it still gets to be a lot sometimes. In terms of changing since middle school, like I said, the pandemic changed me a lot. Being alone for months made me realize a lot about, not only myself, but about the people around me. I realized who was a positive influence on me and who I needed to let go, and I realized what kind of person I was. This really translated to high school and who I became friends with, my hobbies and how I spend my time. Middle school stressed me out a bit, but for the most part, it wasn’t the academic side of it that stressed me out, it was the all of the theatre-related extracurriculars I’d loaded on to myself. Highschool, on the other hand, has caused a lot of anxiety. Like I said the workload is crazy, but as a freshman, I’ve taken up a lot of responsibilities, not only in terms of academics, but in my personal life as well. If I could go back and tell my middle school self something, well, I would want to say a lot, but one of the most important things I would say is to find what makes you happy, and hold on to that. If something doesn’t, fix it or forget it. High school is the time of your life where everything matters, at least in the moment. Academics do, of course, but so do the relationships you form, the hobbies you make up and even the way you think. My aspirations for some aspects of my life have fluctuated, and others have stayed stagnant, but the one thing that won’t change is how hard I’m going to work to achieve them. No matter how different high school and middle school are, they both taught me a lot, academically and about myself, and I wouldn’t change a thing. (Well, actually I think we all know that’s not true, we all wish we could change that one stupid decision we made). Sophia Ferrara, Addison Alsip, and I all have different answers to these questions, but we can all safely say that these past few years have made a huge impact on us, and hopefully, these next few years in high school will too. Who knows, maybe five years from now, I’ll write an article about the differences between high school and college!
