“Something that I didn’t expect at all from freshman year is how much I’ve branched out from my original social group. I’ve had a couple of super close friends since seventh grade, but now I’m starting to meet more people in my class. [I’m] starting to find more people who I can consider closer friends now. I’m really looking forward to just meeting more people and branching out a little more. I think eighth grade mostly prepared me [for freshman year]. In some of my classes, I was pretty prepared. I think geometry is really easy. The shapes just kind of make sense, I guess. But for English, I was just not at all prepared for it. I’m kind of not very good at language arts; also, I didn’t learn very much in eighth-grade language arts.”

(Freshman)