Back to School
for Freshmen too...
August, 2003

Summer is quickly fading away, and most Novi High School students are left remembering their summer vacations, as they get mentally prepared to register for another school year.  The first day of school for students is Monday, August 25, which seemed all too irrelevant to Novi students back on June 13.  
 
For the greater part of Novi High School, the 2003-2004 school year will be a repetition of previous years.  They'll find themselves walking through the same halls, crossing paths with the same students, learning from some of the same teachers, and even sitting in some of the same classrooms as years before.  
 
However, for the incoming class of 2007, Novi High School will be a whole new experience.  Everyone’s always a little nervous to go back to school, but it is the new experience, that tends to cause an extra bit of nervousness for freshmen when summer nears its end.
  
I was recently reminded a little of how I felt entering high school when I ventured over to Novi Middle School to talk about the school radio station at the end of last semester.  It was clear that the 8th graders I talked to didn't know enough about high school in general, to be truly interested in the learning aspect of Novi High.  In the hour or so we had, questions led to more questions.  It wasn’t long before the random questions about high school were being shouted out from all over the classroom.  
 
Hoping to hear the answers that would end their worries about entering high school, they asked questions about everything from waking up earlier, to lunch times, to senior pranks.  Though all of their questions were answered truthfully, chances are their pre-high school jitters never left them.
    
Truth be told, there isn’t much that can be said to fully prepare someone for their freshmen year of high school.  They have the right to be nervous; the differences between high school and middle school are endless.  Bigger school, bigger people, more people, earlier start, less classes, longer classes, harder classes… the list goes on.  The only thing that remains the same is the fact that you're still supposed to be learning, and even that’s harder in high school.
 
Luckily, for this year's incoming class, special accommodations have been made to ensure an easier middle school to high school transition.  The main change is done through Seminar, a class that meets every Tuesday and Thursday, which is used by students to get help in other classes.  Novi High School seminar will now be split into classes containing sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and classes containing just freshmen; this is something Novi High School has never done before.  

Included in the strictly freshmen seminar classes will be a few "freshmen mentors"; these are upper classmen that will "mentor" the freshmen through their first year at the high school. This will soften the blow of the freshmen’s first year of high school, but it has caused some complaints from the upperclassmen.  The re-arranging of seminar classes has caused many students to leave the seminar they had attended since they first arrived at Novi High.  These complaints were short-lived, however, as students were given a day to attend, and get used to, their new seminar.
 
It looks like everything will be back to normal again on August 25.  As always, the incoming freshmen will begin their Novi High School careers, the sophomores will just be glad they’re not freshmen, the juniors will wait patiently to take over the school, and the seniors will become the 8th graders, excited and a little bit nervous, as they prepare to take on life outside of Novi High School.

(c) 2003 the Novi Information Network