Image by Alex Green at Pexels

The start of the school year can be hectic for everyone. However, it’s probably the most chaotic for freshmen, especially in a district where all the other kids come from different schools. Now that people know each other and have had time to get situated, I wanted to survey my fellow freshmen and find out what their experiences have been like these first 2 months of school. First, I needed to actually find people to survey. I started by creating a Google Form. That was the easy part. The hard part was finding people. 

I asked my friends first, who, thankfully, said yes. Granted, that was only 3 people at the time. If I wanted to have a nice, easy-to-work-with number, I was going to need a lot more people. So, I asked them to ask their friends. After there was barely anything left from that point, I started walking around asking people. Surprisingly, it worked very well. By the time I had twenty people, all from different middle schools and programs (including zoned people), and my perfect 25% icon for each program, I had been searching for people for over a week. But there was no time to rest. Now, I had to actually use the data that the hard work of myself and my friends who helped me find people had collected. 

My first official question on the Form asked respondents to rate their experience of getting along with other freshmen on a scale of 1–10, with 1 being absolutely horrendous and 10 being great. 30% said they rated it as 5. 30% rated their experience as 7. 15% chose an 8 while another 15% said 9. Finally, 10% rated their experience as a 10. Generally speaking, it seems to me that the majority of the surveyed freshmen have had good experiences with making new friends and interacting with others.

Next, I asked them how difficult their classes have been on a scale of 0-10. 85% of respondents responded with a number between 5 and 8, with about 70% of that group of people leaning toward 5 and 6. The other 15% responded with either a 3 or 4. Granted, the proportion of people who rated their classes on the more difficult side may have chosen those responses because about 60% of the students surveyed either take Honors, AP, or both levels of classes. 

My next question regarded which classes or courses students wanted to take over the course of the next 4 years. However, because the answers were so diverse, the best way I can sum them up is as follows: most of the students either didn’t know yet or wanted to take Honors/AP classes. 

One of the things that people are always telling high school students is to get involved in their school activities. So, I decided that I would ask the surveyed students whether or not they were in any clubs or sports. Surprisingly, 90% of the freshmen responded that they were in at least one club or sport. Of those 90%, 61.3% are involved in either the Class of 2027 activities or in Student Council, 75.3% are involved in an arts-related club, 26.3% are in computer science or math-related clubs, 18.8% are in the Yearbook Club, and 56.4% are involved in some type of club that involves advocating for certain causes. About 60% of the students surveyed play a sport for the school. As for the 10% who said they were not involved in any clubs or sports, they said that they either were going to, and changed their mind, didn’t have time, or didn’t really look into it in the first place. 

As for what clubs the freshman students surveyed want to see added to the school, 20% want a robotics-related club, 10% want some type of volunteering club, 20% want a new music/art-related club, 15% want a club that has something to do with public speaking, and 50% are unsure. For reference, if you think that my math doesn’t check out, many people are in multiple clubs or sports and would like to see more than one club added to the already abundant list that the school has to offer.

One of the hardest things about the beginning of the school year for freshmen is getting acquainted with their new surroundings. Now, after two months of attending Freehold High School, all of the respondents rated their experience getting around the school between a 5 and a 10 (0 being “I’m still getting lost way too often” and 10 being “I could do this without paying attention”). When I asked what motivated people to do well in school, about 55% of them said that their future was their prime motivation. The other 45% either said that it was their parents, their friends’ encouragement, or something having to do with keeping their grades up. 

Now for two completely open-ended questions. The first was, “If there was one thing you could have to survive high school, what would it be?”. To this, many freshmen said they wanted a guide or friend to help them and offer moral support. A couple of them said they wanted fewer tests or quizzes that had major impacts on your average. To those who agree with the previous statement, I must unfortunately deliver the news that this will probably not happen in your foreseeable future. However, keep dreaming; maybe it will happen to you one day. Finally, the remaining students responded with something that had to do with their phones.

The second question was, “What’s been the hardest part of high school so far?”. The vast majority of responses were workloads, tests, quizzes, and certain classes. A couple of them said time management and/or waking up in the morning. The remainders responded with the difficulty of getting involved and/or making friends. Those last responses were probably (mostly) the same people who ranked their peer interactions at a 5 and responded that they were not involved in any clubs or sports.

Finally, I asked the question that nagged me the most. The question I needed to know the answers to. The final question was “Have you ever read The Colonial (our school newspaper)?”. As this was an anonymous survey and I had added a direction, to be honest, these results should have been fairly anonymous. I suppose I didn’t realize how brutally honest it would be. Disappointingly, only 5% of the surveyed freshmen have read the school newspaper. In this case, 5% means 1 person who only read the newspaper because I sent a link to that person. Luckily, that 5% should change to 100% after this article is published because I plan to send this to every respondent in my survey. 

To those who were kind enough to fill out the survey for this article, you have my sincere gratitude. To those of you who responded later, if not for you, I would have never been able to complete this article. To those of you who helped me reach out and find people to take my survey, thank you. Thank you to everyone who helped me in the process of gathering my data. Freshmen, if you feel that your opinions have not been represented, it is only because you were not surveyed. Good luck to my fellow freshmen on your journey through high school!