Imagine this:

You walk up to the towering building and glaring silver letters stare down at you. You open the door to a scene of chaos: students roaming the halls and teachers getting to their classrooms for the day. It’s difficult to navigate the building, even with the yellow signs at every corner. There’s never a quiet moment. Someone is always screaming or standing in the middle of the hall or running into you as you round a corner. You have no idea where you’re going.

You are a freshman at West Chester East High School, and there are some things you need to know if this school year is going to be bearable for all of us.

Now, I’m aware that I may have given you the misleading impression that this article will offer advice for navigating this school (which is built like a prison. Trust me, the lack of natural light and simple room numbering annoys us all). However, I am as directionally challenged as the rest of you and totally unqualified to help you with that. Just follow the signs and walk on the right side of the hallway. Please. While I can’t provide a detailed map of the school or a list of which staircases will actually take you to the science floor, I can offer other things in the way of advice. So listen up, freshman! Here are cautionary tales from the 2021-22 school year that will, probably, keep you from making fools of yourselves.

#1 Freshman Initiation

Homecoming is fast approaching. I imagine you are excited for your first ‘real’ school dance (though us juniors will eternally resent you for getting an eighth grade dance when we were cheated out of ours), but homecoming week comes with the unpleasant added bonus of freshmen being ridiculed. This unspoken rule of high school is something that I’m sure you were made aware of already, but you might not know exactly what to expect, and more importantly, how to avoid it.

The first step to avoiding being ridiculed is knowing whether or not you might be a target. If you have an older sibling or upperclassmen friends, my condolences. You put that target on your own back. No one can help you now. But the rest of you can have hope. By avoiding certain areas during pep rally day, such as the link, you can more or less avoid getting mocked. At least while classes are still in session. Once we move out to the football field, it’s every man for themselves. Steer clear of large groups of upperclassmen and try not to make eye contact with anyone. I wish you luck.

In the event that you do get initiated, you can expect a couple of things, unless the upperclassmen have developed new methods since last year. Upperclassman love using their water bottles to splash innocent freshman, which is unsanitary, and I’ve also heard about people having glitter thrown on them, which is funny cause that’s never coming out of your clothes. Technically, none of these things are allowed. But when have rules ever stopped a teenager’s craving for chaos? The water bottles also appear at the homecoming dance. Try not to get it in your eyes. Been there, done that. At least I didn’t get covid from it.

My final words of wisdom in regards to this topic are, perhaps, the most important. No matter what, DO NOT try to do the same to the upperclassmen. I saw a few audacious freshmen attempt this last year. Believe me, the upperclassmen will get back at you with ten times the force. They are older and bigger than you. Not to mention filled with the special kind of stress and rage that comes from many years spent in public high school. If you try to take revenge, you will regret it.

#2 Bathrooms and Fire Alarms

Bathrooms and fire alarms? What do those have to do with each other? You might be asking yourself those questions right about now. Yes, they are separate issues, but there is one thing connecting them: the fire alarms in the bathrooms are sensitive. If you smoke in the bathrooms, they get upset. So don’t smoke in the bathrooms (or at all). It’s nice the first few times the fire alarm goes off and we get a break from class, but once we reach the point where it’s bursting our eardrums three times a week (yes, that was our record last year), it starts to get old. The fire alarm already goes off every time they do electrical work, so we don’t need to deal with people setting it off even more.

Speaking of bathrooms, here’s a complete list of things you should not, under any circumstances, do in the bathrooms: eat on the floor (gross), put pancake mix or other non-bathroom products in the toilets, vape, make a mess, write threatening messages on the walls (it won’t get us out of school like you think it will), put non-soap things in the soap dispensers (I won’t be specific cause it disgusted me the first time I heard about it), steal. If you do any of these things, the school will close the bathrooms and you’ll be stuck walking for five minutes just to find an open one. It’s not worth it. We’re already required to take gym class. Don’t force us to exercise every time we employ our basic human right to use the bathroom.

Note: In the event that the power goes out at any time during the school year, remain calm. The fire alarm will probably go off promptly after and the emergency lights will come on soon enough. It’s actually kind of fun, and it gets you out of class.

#3 Fights

I’m gonna start off with an obligatory don’t get in fights so that I don’t get in trouble for this article. Don’t fight…

Alright! Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about fights in school. They happen in a variety of places, the repeat offenders being the cafeteria and the link. Note that those are very crowded parts of the school. In the event that you find yourself in a fight (which you shouldn’t!) keep in mind that you will be recorded. That video will be sent to everyone. At some point, the majority of the student body will see it and they will see how dumb you look when fighting.

That’s right. You heard me. No matter how strong you think you are or how cool you think you look, every last one of you looks like the lamest, most awkward person in the world when you fight. Especially if you’re a boy. Sorry, but the girls just fight better. So if you all want to save yourselves some embarrassment, think twice about fighting on school grounds. I still know how to find footage of fights from last year. You’ll never escape the mortification of knowing everyone watched you throwing the world’s weakest punches.

Final Advice

So if you couldn’t tell, last year was an eventful one. Feel free to ask an upperclassman. They’ll be glad to tell you every crazy thing that happened. I have no doubt that you all will experience some craziness too, but hopefully these cautionary tales will keep you from doing anything too stupid.

I’d like to leave you with a few general words of wisdom: If you’re going to walk slowly, keep to the side. In fact, just stay on the right side of the hallway at all times because that’s common courtesy (everyone in this school needs to hear this). No one wants to get into mid-hallway collisions. Don’t scream in the halls or on the buses (it’s annoying). And please, for the love of all that is good in this world, don’t stand in the middle of the hallway. The rest of us have places to be.

Honestly, unless you happen to already have older friends, the upperclassmen’s default opinion of freshmen is that you’re annoying, no offense. Try your best to prove us wrong.

That’s all for now. Good luck!