The transition into freshman can be exciting and overwhelming at the same time. But fret not, because Dr. Tim Jordan brings some high school seniors to share their wisdom in navigating the freshman year. This podcast episode has it all, from finding your perfect friend group to conquering academic anxieties. Learn how to find your tribe, conquer academic challenges, and embrace personal growth. Discover the importance of being authentic, building meaningful relationships, and navigating the ups and downs of your freshman year with confidence. Tune in now and get ready to thrive as a high school freshman!
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How To Survive And Thrive Freshman Year: Advice From High School Seniors
I’ve got a treat for you because with me are three high school women. One of them is a freshman. She’s about to start high school. The other three are 2 seniors and 1 sophomore. I thought it’d be interesting for our freshman girl here to ask these girls some questions about what it’s like to start high school because I know a lot of your daughters may have already started because of when this show comes out. They may have some worries about starting high school and questions about starting high school. I thought I would allow these three girls to give some information that you can give to your daughters. Let your daughters read this and make sure you think it’s valuable for them. First of all, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having us.
I’m wondering as an incoming high school freshman, what’s foremost on your mind?
Finding a new group of people to hang out with, and new friends because I’m sure a lot of other people starting high school maybe have friends from middle school that are going into high school with them. I am at a new high school so I don’t know anyone. That’s at the forefront of my mind.
Some of you had different situations when you started. Even if you were in a public school, for instance, sometimes there are 2 or 3 middle schools that dump into a high school. It shakes everything up. You may not have classes with your best friends. I don’t think it’s people starting brand new or fresh that’s on their minds. Is that true for you guys?
A little bit.
What was that like for you three starting high school as far as worries about friends?
What It’s Like Starting High School?
For me, my high school was connected to the middle school, or like it is connected to the middle school. In the middle school classes, the grade would be 30 people, but then in high school, it jumped to 70 or 80 people. It was like the same school in the same environment, but we’d get over double the number of people coming in. I remember feeling like, “They’re going to throw everything off.” The vibe is going to be weird like, “I don’t know.” It was like we had something set up, but then everybody knew that it was going to change and that was a weird feeling to be like. Everybody collectively knew that the space that we had created was going to change. It changed for the better.
I’m curious, what were people like that those first few weeks in high school no matter if they had been to the school previously or if it was a brand new school. I always tell girls that sometimes people are a little squirrely those first few weeks because everybody says, “It’s a new thing. It’s changed. People feel a little insecure. Sometimes they don’t get their best.” Do you think that’s true or not true?
I would say true.
In what way?
In the first week, people are usually really quiet in classrooms because they’re all nervous and don’t like, want to talk because they don’t know what to say and then the next couple of weeks, it’s still awkward because you’re still trying to get used to the feel of school and being back and everything. Even freshman year, either way, it still has that effect because it’s, “I’m a step up from middle school, but there could be new people,” so no one really knows what to do or how to act.
How about you?
I feel like it’s a great mindset to be in that even though everyone’s got different backgrounds and different stories coming in, they’re all in the same position. At the end of the day, you’re all freshmen, it’s your first day of high school and nobody knows what to expect. The feelings are similar whether you have a good friend group or not. Personally, I came from a middle school where about 95% of the students went to a different high school than me.
Even though everyone has different backgrounds and stories, you're in the same position. You're all freshmen on your first day of high school. Share on XI literally only had my little friend group. Going in, it was nerve-wracking not knowing whether I was going to have classes or lunch with them. I barely knew anyone. By the end of the year, I had found a solidified group of friends. I have many people that have my back. They treat me well and it honestly comes with time.
I’m wondering about you because you’re starting school. Have you heard horror stories about high school, about how people get hazed or the freshmen get treated badly or whatever? I’m curious if you’ve heard stories and if that makes you nervous.
It’s a universal stereotype that freshmen are picked on. Coming from a smaller Catholic school where everybody knows everybody I feel like every school is interlinked. You hear about if one thing happens and there’s like drama at one school like all the schools know about it. I feel like I’ve heard a lot of stuff about drama that gets thrown around and circulates because everybody knows everybody. I’m going to a public school, I feel like that’s a little bit lessened that worry because it’s bigger. It’s a school in St. Louis so I feel like it is still tied in with people knowing people, but it’s not as interlinked in that like, circle of Catholic school. I feel like that’s good because the private school circle is so weird because as you were saying, you hear stuff about people throughout all those other private schools and it’s such a weird culture thing.
They’re that connected.
Yes, people know because they’re smaller and you have to go outside of those schools to sometimes find the people that you connect with the most. That’s the case for a lot of people. People know those people and it’s weird.
How do you navigate that? You go to a public school. You go to a private school, 3 publics and 1 private. How do you navigate that and worry that if anything happens, it’s going to be everywhere?
I try to avoid people who are very drama all the time because most of the time when that type of stuff happens where things get around and other people from other schools find out about it, it’s mainly because certain people who are always drama-filled start drama and spread it. For me, I mind my own business and I don’t associate myself with those people because it’s a waste of time.
How about you guys?
I feel like everyone, especially now going into sophomore year, but going into freshman year, once all the excitement was drained and stuff, everyone focused on themselves and everyone’s changing, learning, and growing. Focusing on you and yourself kept me out of all the drama because there was drama, but I don’t feel like it was as bad as maybe it was in middle school. I definitely enjoyed high school better. I had a lot of fun in my freshman year. There was a lot more freedom. The worries of drama being spread and all that went away for me the more I focused on myself.
High school is better. Freshman year has more freedom, and it's fun. Share on XTrue or not true? A lot of girls I talk with, they think when they walk in the building everybody’s looking at them and judging them and all that. In reality, what you’re saying is a lot of us are more focused on ourselves than they are about everybody. Is that true?
I think that progresses. As you go through high school, that becomes more true in each grade that you go up because I feel like in freshman year everybody’s very external because they’re all in that same position of looking out for themselves and all that stuff. I feel like the more that you progress through high school, the more you don’t care about that stuff because you’re not in that position anymore of the newbie and stuff.
How’d you take care of yourselves in that freshman year when maybe it was more external? Use your words. How’d you guys take care of yourselves so you didn’t get sucked into it like you avoided people, but anything else that you guys did?
I focused on the things I enjoyed. Even if that was as simple as art class, just doing art, cheerleading, focusing on myself at the dance, and participating in the things that I know I enjoy and excel at helped me focus on myself more. For me, with those nerves and stuff, I guess for my freshman year, every day, even the first week of school, I focused on finding my friends and sticking with my friends that I had already had from eighth grade or even as the year went on, the new friends that I made, I still focused on like finding them everywhere I went because when I was with them I didn’t worry about everything else and everybody who would be “looking” at me, which was for me it was nice to have that feeling.
Do you have any worries about the academic part of high school?
Academic Challenges
For sure. I feel like I put a lot of pressure on myself to excel at everything and do the absolute best that I can in every subject. In high school, I know that it’s going to be harder, but I don’t know how much more difficult it’s going to be. I definitely put a lot of pressure on myself. I’m nervous about classes and maybe not excelling at certain ones.
Were you guys worried when you started high school that it was going to be a lot harder and the teachers were going to be a lot more strict and less lenient and all that? Did you guys have worries about that when you started?
Yeah.
What’d do about that? How’d you get through? How did you find that that was true?
I found that going into freshman year, I had all those worries, but the jump from eighth-grade year to freshman year was not that bad it wasn’t. Freshman year to sophomore year was a harder transition academically than like freshman year or eighth-grade year to freshman year. I feel like freshman year is like your prep year, like you’re in high school, but it’s also like your prep year for high school if that makes sense.
There are probably no AP classes yet. There are probably fewer honors classes than those sorts of things. Maybe it wasn’t as big a leap as sometimes people worry about. Looking back on it, in freshman year I was like, “I’m in high school or whatever,” but now looking back at freshman year, I did not act like a high schooler. It was really like the training grounds. I wrote something down. We talked about this at one of the weekend retreats and you may have been there. This is for middle school girls. They started talking one Saturday night about being harassed by boys at school in the hallways and things. You were there, weren’t you?
I probably was. It was a middle school.
I remember that there were a lot of emotions that were shared about how all the experiences they had. I’m wondering if now that you’re going up a level and you’re not going to be with 8th graders, you’re going to be with ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. Do you ever think about that part?
I feel like that’s something that’s always on my mind when I’m in any space. It’s not one of my main concerns, to be honest. I think it’s because I’m very careful about who I surround myself with and the type of people that I’m around and the type of boys. I don’t like hanging around guys a lot at all. I don’t like to. It’s definitely on my mind, but it’s not something that I’m super worried about.
I’m curious about as freshmen going into the big high school with the upper class, boys and girls, did you guys have bad experiences ever?
For me, not really. I feel like it was a lot worse for me in eighth grade. For me at least, I felt like they paid less attention to me and other people in high school than in eighth grade because they were like, “I’m in high school. I’m cool now,” type of thing. Whereas like me, it was school another day at school for me. I didn’t have to worry about it too much I feel like as you go on throughout high school, it’s like that. They believe you alone unless like you’re friends with them.
How about you?
I did have a lot of harassment and bullying in eighth grade by boys specifically. When I got to high school, it helped that I went to a different high school, but genuinely, I feel like especially within the upperclassmen, they all find a sport and they get really attached to their sport. The majority of them mature in a way where they like to want a good future with their sports. I’m talking basketball, baseball, football, even, wrestling, and big sports. All these boys join them and they make their priorities the sports.
I feel like they don’t really focus on girls that much. I don’t have the time, the energy or the need to make fun of girls or to get that attention from girls because they get the attention from their sports and then they see a future with their sports. I’m saying from all that my friends have said because I do have a lot of guy friends and they all do like their sports. I had very little problem with guys in high school, specifically the guys that go to my school.
I feel like I dealt with a lot of that thing in middle school, 8th or 7th grade, and later years of middle school. I’m going to a different school than all of the guys who were like that in middle school, but I feel like I picked up ways to avoid that and handle it better because I experienced a lot of it in my later years of middle school.
What’d you learn for the parents who are reading this and or the girls?
My school wasn’t always the best at handling it the way that they were supposed to and taking the steps on their part that they probably should have been to handle a lot of the bullying and harassment that was going on. I learned definitely how to speak up about it more, and how to get them to stop and use my voice better in general because it wasn’t always being heard by the school.
I hear a lot that schools don’t handle it well and “nothing happens.”
Dealing With Bullying And Harassment
A big part of it is knowing that boys in high school do stuff like that because they want attention and they want to feed their egos, knowing that you don’t have to give them that attention back even if it gets on your nerves. Don’t expend your energy because that’s what they want. They want that attention because that’s what gives them their personality and the attention that they want. Knowing who you are and knowing in yourself that you’re way above that. That’s very fulfilling looking back at the end of the day when you go home, you’re like, “They’re all being really stupid, but I know that.” I’m like, “Amazing. I’m way above that level so I don’t have to stoop down to that,” because then you don’t have to give them that energy then you feel more like validated in yourself.
That happened to me a lot in eighth grade. There was this one guy that was always on me all the time and I acted like I didn’t care. Over time, he stopped doing it. I think one day I made fun of him back and he tried to hurt me because this was during COVID when he had the weird dual thing for school where it was online and in school. There was one day when we were in class and he said something to our teacher. I made fun of him for whatever he said. He tried to get back at me and make fun of the color of my mask. I was like, “It’s pink. What do you like?” He was trying to say, “Yeah, the same color mask as my sister.” I was like, “It’s a pink mask. I’m pretty sure a bunch of people have a pink mask.” Things like that. If you know the person, if you’re comfortable, go back at them because I feel like me doing that made him leave me alone.
They want that quick instinct reaction that you have, the defensive reaction. I feel like as long as you take even half a second to get rid of that defensiveness aspect and then be calm and collected, they’ll be like, “I’m not going to mess with her.” It’s the defensiveness, offensive defensiveness, and scrappy vulnerability that they latch onto.
Showing that you care about what they’re doing. They latch onto that a lot.
Also, or that it gets to you.
Being calm and being direct. High school boys get afraid of that. It catches them off guard and they don’t know what to do. When someone is composed, they don’t know how to do that.
It’s like you keep your feathers we learn at camp. Don’t give your feathers away. I’m curious about you three. Looking back, is there anything you wish you had known before you started high school that you didn’t know that you know now?
For my school at least, the teachers really weren’t that strict. During lunch and stuff in middle school, we weren’t allowed to have our phones. If we had them, we would always be get told, “This isn’t going to pass in high school,” literally no one cared. During lunch, we were able to get up and get our own food. We didn’t have to raise our hands and go up there. Teachers have their own rules, but some teachers didn’t care if we had our phones out on our desks or something. They were a lot more chill than my middle school teachers were making it seem like.
Teacher relationships are super important, knowing how to interact with your teacher, seeing their personality, and developing that relationship, but then also finding a teacher who you connect with and vibe with. That’s something that I did in high school. I found two teachers who I connected with. I would go to like their classroom after school and I would chat with them. It’s still like on that professional level, but it’s a good thing to have and it makes you feel more connected.
I know this is going to sound cliché because it is, but knowing that it is okay to not be okay, knowing that there are classes and subjects that I’m going to struggle with and there are relationships that I’m going to get in that aren’t the best friendship or romantic. Knowing that in the end there are people out there to talk to and to guide you. There are many trusted adults that I have. Not only my parents, but camp counselors, teachers, and the counselors at school. They all helped guide me through all my roadblocks and I was able to overcome them. That was something I was afraid of because growing up through each grade, it’s like, “You’re in 4th grade and the teachers tell you your 5th grade teachers aren’t going to do this. They’re not going to deal with this. You need to mature up.”
In fifth grade, they’re like, “All middle school teachers are not going to deal with your Math. You’re not going to get recess. You need to be more mature when you get into middle school.” They prep you for every single grade. In eighth grade they’re like, “High school teachers, they won’t stand by that. You need to change,” and then you get into high school and the amount of freedom, I had so much fun being able to go to lunch and get my own food without having to be called on by the teacher, being able to have open conversations with my friends. It’s hard to explain, but with the amount of freedom I had, I felt like I was able to be myself without having someone constantly hovering over me.
Independence is a beautiful thing and the culture shifts like we don’t raise our hands in class anymore. You’ll have that mutual respect for each other, but I also think that the part that you were saying in the beginning about like, letting go of perfection is important. I was someone who was in my freshman year I was in all A pluses. I did not have a single B, not even a B+. That would make me so mad. In my junior year, I got a B+. That was a journey that I had to go through to accept.
Seriously, it was a journey that I had to go through, like knowing that I still did my best and that’s okay. My grades are still good, but as long as at the end of the day you’re proud of what you’re doing and you know that you tried your hardest, whatever’s on the sheet doesn’t matter. Also, the same with like how you portray yourself as your person. That goes for your grades, but how you carry yourself. As long as you’re proud of how you present yourself to the world, it doesn’t matter what’s on that.
Another thing that I wish I would’ve known or had someone tell me is that if you believe that every year you go through high school your classes are going to get harder and harder. If you go through it all easily breezy and go with the flow, they really aren’t as bad as you have been telling yourself. After my freshman year going to, my sophomore year, I was like, “This is going to be so much harder. I don’t know if I can do this,” but then sure yes, in some classes, I had my strengths and the others I really didn’t, but it wasn’t as bad as I had been telling myself. Same with junior year. I had a B+ in Algebra. At the end of the year, at the end of my finals, I’ve never had a B in Math since middle school. That was a huge milestone for me, being easy breezy and like, not telling myself it’s going to be difficult, it made it easier for me to focus on what I was learning and understand it better.
One more thing is not being afraid to ask for help because I feel like we’ve been talking a lot about gaining that independence. I feel like with going into high school, you feel like you’ve gained a lot of independence and you don’t want to let that go by asking for help. I think that there’s something very strong that shows that you are able to become more independent and like you’re growing up by being able to ask for help whether that be with schoolwork or your personal life. Don’t be afraid to do that because that’s something that’s really important. If you don’t ask for that help, then you will wear yourself down in your classes will start to become harder, and then that will fall.
One of the things you said earlier was life happens. I wouldn’t be thinking, “It’s going to be hard and the classes are hard.” I wouldn’t be thinking worst case. I would say, “Stuff will happen and I will be able to handle it. If I need help, I can learn to advocate. I did a recording. It wasn’t you guys. It was some people from the group the year before. They were talking about being afraid to grow up.
I was here for that one.
They were intense about, “Oh my God, I am going to grow up.” I was like, “We need to talk about that in the show.” One of the things that I remember. Towards the end, what they said was that they felt like one of the reasons why they were afraid to grow up was because their parents had done too much for them. They solved their problems and they had done too many things. They didn’t have the confidence to make decisions and stuff because the schools, the system, their parents, everybody had done that for them so they didn’t feel prepared to be an “adult.”
One of the things I would say if when stuff happens, you do the best you can if you need help, like you all are saying, “Don’t be afraid to ask,” whether it’s a teacher or a school counselor or your parents or whomever, it’s okay to reach out and get help not because I’m for forecasting that, “Oh my God, it’s going to be horrible,” but because your whole life stuff will happen if you learn in high school how to take care of yourself and or reach out for help in order to take care of yourself. I think when you graduate from high school, you’ll be ready for the next step, which is so much harder when you graduate.
When stuff happens, do the best you can. It's okay to reach out and get help if you need it. Share on XWe’re almost there.
I know. I’m so scared.
Find Your Tribe
“Don’t be afraid to ask for help.” I know we’ve been saying that, but like, everybody struggles and even if you think that you’re like the only one struggling, I don’t know how many people are going to be at your school, but there are let’s say thousands or hundreds of people in your school that’ll be struggling too.
It’s mature and it takes so much strength to ask for help. I don’t want to undermine that because part of growing up is learning how to ask for the right help from the right people.
Are you good at that or is it easy for you or is it hard?
It’s hard for me sometimes because I want to like be able to do it by myself.
It’s good to want to solve your own problems and all, but I guess what you guys are saying is there’s a point at which it’s like, “Now I’ve exhausted my toolbox. I need more help.” When you had all those problems, at some point people didn’t stop wherever they were bullying you and all that thing. Any other questions you have for incoming freshmen that you would want some advice from?
One that I wrote down was, “I’m nervous about falling in with the wrong group of people.” I know that a lot of people from probably the middle school already have their groups and stuff. I know that there are going to be lots of new people and plenty of people who are feeling the same way as me, but I feel like I’m going to be left out the fact that I’m not sure what groups are what or what because I feel like there is a lot of clickiness and assigning labels to certain groups of people. I’m not going to know where to go or like, “I shouldn’t hang out with them because they’re like not a cool or not a good group to be around.” I’m scared to fall in with people who are super drama-invested and chase, that type of thing or not know who my people are.
How would you guys answer that?
When she first said that, the first thing that came to my mind was something that you tell us all the time, which is, “Your vibe attracts your tribe,” which is no cliché and it’s like, “She’s running up,” but it’s so true. I feel like I said this, but I want to reiterate it. The most important part is it’s your life and the journey of it is finding who you are and that’s going to change throughout periods of your life. Knowing who you are in this period of your life and really having that self-awareness is going to be what attracts the people that you want. I would say focusing on yourself because if you don’t know who you are, then you’re going to attract all these different things that you want.
I’m going to piggyback off of what you said because I had the same thought. I was going to say, finding people that match your vibe. That sounds very cliché, but you can feel it when you don’t match with someone. I wish I would’ve had the guts to guess and admit that freshman year because I didn’t then I wasted my whole freshman year being friends with a girl who was not a very good person and was very drama-filled.
I’m no longer friends with her or this other girl who’s very drama-filled. I have two really close friends and they’re not either of the same friend group, but honestly, I like that. If you ever find yourself in a position like that where you have like different friends from other friend groups, I don’t want to say necessarily don’t be afraid or like, don’t feel bad just because you have two different friend groups because honestly, I feel like it’s nice sometimes because you can get a break from like hanging out with one and then hang out with the other.
They explained it beautifully. Walking into freshman year, I did have 5 or 6 girls that I was pretty good friends with. I never really had any problems with it, but I did still feel alone. I did feel I had nobody I could go and lean on or nobody I could go and rant my problems to. Even though they were there, it felt like I was alone. I still had the best year of school I probably have ever had. I did end up finding many people and I really did do it by being myself. I really expressed who I was. I took the classes that I liked.
I took art, food, and things that I enjoy and I attracted other people who were in those classes that have the same interest as me. I made a lot of friends from it. The relationships I have are really healthy. You have to trust the process. It comes with time, but you have to trust not only yourself but that you have the power to choose. I don’t know how to say it, but you have so much power.
Knowing that throughout your high school journey and in life, it’s okay to outgrow people sometimes. Sometimes people are in your life and you want to hold onto them because you had such good memories with them, you had such a good time with them and this might be a little off-topic, but sometimes it’s okay to recognize that they were there in that moment for when they needed to be, but you’re a different person now and you’ve grown. You’re no longer at the same level it’s okay to recognize that, then go, attract, and find other people who are at that same level.
Since you are going to a new school and you said that none of your friends are going to the school, you said a minute ago about e picking classes that you like and everything. Finding people that way I think is a good idea because that’s what I did my sophomore year because I tried to do my freshman year, but it didn’t work out for me. I joined the choir during my sophomore year. It’s my favorite thing in the world. I’ve done it since elementary school. I found one of my best friends in that class and some mothers of friends that I go to school with too in that class. They’re the reason that I enjoy that class so much and that I keep going and joining that class because they make it enjoyable.
You’ve probably heard me say this at camp, I apologize if I bore you, but I think if you walk in the building and you do your best to be yourself like they’re saying and be authentic, whatever that looks like for you, that whoever you attract will end up being someone who’s a good friend because they like you. If you walk in there and try and be somebody else, you’re trying to fit in or you’re some avatar of who you are, then you might attract people but they’re not attracted to you. They’re attracted to this version of you that’s not really you. That sounds easy maybe it’s not that easy. Any other questions that you have for these old people?
The ones that I wrote down were ones that you had.
Trust yourself. You said, “I don’t want to attract ‘bad people.’” I would trust your gut that you do know yourself because I know you, You know yourself and you’re very mature. I would trust your sense of, “I can read people. I’ll trust that I will be able to tell.” I would base it solely on your observations because when you walk into a school, you’re going to hear stories. Probably there are old rumors and old stories about somebody from 4th grade or 8th grade or something. People change. People grow up. I would base it only on what you’re seeing that day. Don’t worry about what you’ve heard about them maybe from some other group. I’d give everybody a fresh start.
Trust Your Gut Instinct
Gut instinct is so powerful. It’s always right because it’s coming from you. That’s what your body is physically telling you that you need.
Gut instinct is so powerful. That's when your body is physically telling you that you need it. Your body will show you in different ways. Share on XYour body will show you in different ways. Whether it’s like when you’re with those people, you have a stomach ache, you’re nervous all the time because one of my friends, she was in a relationship, but every day she would go to school anxious, have a stomach ache and all this stuff. Now she doesn’t get those anymore because of that guy because she was worried about all of that, what he thought and everything.
It’s really hard.
Your head fights it sometimes.
For me, because I’m self-aware of that stuff, it’s easy, but for people who aren’t, it is a hard thing. But it, yeah.
There’s probably a transition. You may feel a little bit more lonely the first few weeks or months maybe because you don’t know anybody yet even if you meet some people, you don’t really know them. They’re not close to them yet. You may not be able to lean on them or like your best friends from your old school. You may have to pass through a time when you’re a little bit more lonely and a little disconnected. Trust that, “I’ll find my people.” It might be through a class. It might be through if you join something. It might take a little while, but I think if you’re patient and you trust your gut, you’ll attract people.
I want to say that high school isn’t going to be your whole world. It’s going to be there and you’re going to have to do that on your day-to-day. There are people outside of that. There’s camp people and stuff like that. Sometimes they’ll get drowned out and be like, “Oh my god.”
I’m thankful for the fact that I have a really solid group of friends. I have a couple of friends coming from my old school, but I wasn’t super connected to anybody in elementary through middle school. I’m feeling okay about the fact that I have liked my camp friends.
I also wonder because you guys know her from camp, if you might end up attracting sophomores, juniors, or people who are a little older, maybe because you’re mature and you’re probably more mature than most people who are entering their freshman year of high school from what I’ve known about you for the last several years. Maybe it doesn’t really matter what grade they’re in, it’s a matter of who you connect with. Any other final questions?
I don’t think so.
Are you ready to start high school?
I’m so ready.
You got your backpack full of clichés. I think that part about trusting yourself and being patient is not buying into some of these myths about how it’s so much harder. I hear that all the time about now. Teachers warn all along the way, “You think it’s hard now, wait until,” but then you get to that next place, and it’s like, “Okay.”
It’s like, “This is easy.”
It’s like, “Why would you put that in my mind?” It’s like they want you to fail. It’s like, “Why would you say that?”
I’m glad that I became friends with the seniors in my sophomore year because the next year, she was going to college. She goes to community college. Being able to talk to her about how that is, because even now, teachers will still be like, “College is way different. If you keep acting like this, you’re not going to do good.” My friend tells me, “As long as you show up and do your work, they don’t care,” which I like. She is a good teacher too.
For most people, especially for high school, it sounds like they imported the smartest people from every country to be in your class. You’re going to be competing against these people who are all going to get 30 sixes on their CT without even opening a book. It’s like the same people. It’s similar to people to what you did. If you did okay academically where you came from, then you’ll do fine academically wherever you’re going to. Thank you so much for your suggestions for our little, baby, freshman girl. You’re going to have a good start. I’m sure you will. If it’s a little whatever at first, that’s okay. That’s part of it.
It’s always going to be whatever. I had coffee with several people who are starting college. They’re all anxious. There’s much uncertainty and all that again because they’re starting fresh, but that’s part of it. When you start something new, there’s going to be some uncertainty. That’s what happens in life. You learn how to deal with that. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you to all who are reading. This might be a good episode to read with your daughter to spur some conversations about maybe what’s on her mind. Even if she started already, she’s been in school for 1 week or 2, it’s okay. It’s still fresh. Maybe spur some conversations about what she’s doing, how she’s taking care of herself, etc. I will be back as always with a brand new episode. I appreciate you stopping by. If you have some ideas for me to cover in the future, then email me at my wife’s website, Anne@DrTimJordan.com, with ideas about topics you’d like for me to discuss. Thank you so much for stopping by.