Your heart is beating fast as you look up at the place you are about to spend the next four years. You have been told that your freshman year will be the easiest of your high school life. That might be the case, or it might not. In my experience, ninth grade was the year that meant the most to me. 

When going into this new school, you will have teachers constantly telling you that this year will make it or break it for you. 

They’re not lying. 

In fact, I took their advice. I now have opportunities that many won’t have. Honors classes, straight A’s, a 4.0 GPA, and a job is what got me here today. I am on track to get an associate degree and have many college credit hours, all before I start my junior year. All of this is because I took the opportunities given to me during my ninth-grade year. 

Freshman year is important for many reasons. Your first year can determine if you get into the Academy at EC3, whether you get accepted into Advanced Placement (AP) and honors classes, if you’re on track to get your driver’s license, and so much more. – The Academy is an opportunity to leave Central, throughout the day during your junior and senior year. When you leave, you are taken to the Academy to get your Associate’s Degree and college credited hours – Not only are your grades at risk but so is your ability to drive legally. All of these negative possibilities are solely based on your presentation in the first year of high school.

A further reason to focus on your freshman year is your time. If you do not take the time during school and outside of it, AIM, Saturday School, Night School, and Summer School will come into play. AIM is essentially in-school detention, taking away your PowerHour or your whole day depending on the reasoning. Next is Saturday School, taking away your weekend. Night School takes after-school school time. After that, the two and a half months of freedom you are given can be taken away to do school work you decided not to do during the year, or in other words, you can be sent to Summer School. 

Students who decide skipping school, playing games, smoking in the bathroom, or sleeping is better than doing required work, will eventually have to pay the price. Anyone who chooses to participate in these harmful activities regularly will be held back a grade.

Personally, being able to drive, having my free time, and being eligible to be accepted to quality schools are some of my top priorities. If your ambition in life consists of going to university or college, or simply being well-off after high school, concentrate on academics and extracurricular activities. 

Unfortunately, sometimes a student’s life outside of school can affect their grades. Some take on more responsibility than others. Some may have to put their personal life before school. For senior Angel Skaggs, this was the case. 

In Skaggs’s freshman and sophomore years, her last concern was school. In her personal life, she was raising her little sister while working to pay the bills and support her sister. 

“When I was raising my sister, I didn’t care about my grades,” she said. 

Eventually, Skaggs had the opportunity to move out of her family’s home into her older sister’s. With this new opportunity, her grades started to improve from being a freshman with all F’s and no credits to a junior with one credit. As the year went on, she kept working to get the credits she needed. She is currently in credit recovery getting the credits she needs. Eventually, it pays off. She is now a senior with all the credits she needs to graduate while having a significantly better home life. 

Skaggs’s advice to freshmen: “Get your credits so you can graduate and work on yourself.”

Skaggs’s experience shows how much her first years affected the rest. It demonstrates that she had to make those credits up because she didn’t get to her first two years. The same can happen to you. 

Junior Kayden Walk’s experience was a little different. As a result of his freshman and sophomore years, he had 12 classes to make up. He did this by attending Night School, Summer School, and Credit Recovery. 

“I turned it around because I wanted to graduate, get a job, and get my driver’s license, ” Walk concluded. He had to take his personal time to make up for the lost credits necessary to graduate.  

This illustrates what can happen if you don’t take school seriously. Not everyone treats high school with importance. If you have the option to take your time with school and put effort into it, then do. School can determine your future. 

“Don’t mess around because it’ll make you fall behind and affect the rest of your high school years,” Walk advised.

The gravity of freshman year is no joke. Transitioning from middle to high school is a big change, one some of you might not be ready for. Become ready for it. My advice: take school in earnest. Ninth grade can be more difficult and crucial than you think.