Along with being the 20th anniversary, the 2024-2025 school year welcomes the largest freshman class in the history of Seven Lakes, coinciding with the advent of a new generation of students – Generation Alpha. This possible paradigm shift raises the question: what are the attitudes of this years’ freshmen?
For many incoming freshmen, transitioning into high school is a daunting endeavor. The size of the school, along with extracurricular and academic demand, often feels overwhelming.
“I was really scared,” Adriana Palacios said. “I thought it was really big, and I thought I was never gonna learn where anything was.”
Despite initial worries, students are quick to discover that the atmosphere is largely welcoming. However, high school brings on new worries as demands from extracurricular activities and schoolwork pile up.
“Now that I’m in high school, I barely even have time to eat, like, dinner or anything – I’m just doing homework after homework after homework,” student athlete Fadia Bayaa said. “When the season starts, I’m gonna be so much more worried [because] it’s just a lot of work.”
While the addition of sports compounds the burden of fulfilling expectations, students also find joy and comfort in extracurricular activities.
“I feel like soccer kind of just helps take away all that stress from normal school activities,” Maria Villa Do Miu said.
“I’m doing like Best Buddies so I can help out like all the kids,” Emery Bond said. “I think it’s so good to have a close relationship with them [so] they get to experience high school as much as we do.”
Besides extracurricular activities, students are also learning to rely on the unwavering support of friends and family.
“I feel like high school at the beginning was really intimidating because I came from a smaller school,” Villa Do Miu said. “If I don’t go to [my parents], it’s probably going to be a lot worse than trying to figure it out on my own.”
Still, the constant distraction of social media looms large — students can unknowingly lose hours of their time scrolling on social media. Generation Alpha, growing up with technology, is particularly attuned with technological usage and the implications of social media usage; however, it’s ultimately up to themselves to take the initiative to stay focused.
“It might seem like everyone in my school has Tiktok, everyone has Snapchat, everyone has Instagram,” Bayaa said. “It’s fun to do all this stuff, but you have to actually lock in.”
For this new generation of students, high school isn’t just about hopping onto the next social media trend or staying connected online; it’s about rising above their challenges to attain their own standard of success.
