By: Cassie Rodas and Leonides Martinez

It is your first day at Animo Pat Brown and you just walked through the front doors feeling anxious and excited. As you walked through, you see Mr.Hartford telling the students where to head to based on your grade level. You see your name below your grade level and see the room you’re assigned to for first period. You look around to see where it is. and struggle find it so you ask someone to help lead the way to your first period. That is when the first minutes of your high school experience begins. 

Many of the freshman were not as excited to attend APB even though it was the beginning of their high school experience and the beginning to their future path in few years. Ashley Tovar an APB freshman said, “I was fifty percent wanting to come to APB however, other fifty percent did not want to come here. I wanted to attend APB because they teach you good but there is not many sports.”Up coming freshman come to APB with a despise to attend this school just like Ashley does. Furthermore, George Lopez an APB freshman said, “I did want to attend and it was better than my other choices at the time.” Other students are glad to come to APB because they are able to be in a good environment where it is good for the students and their education. APB students feel prepared and have an ideal education path of what they want to do in the future. 

Meeting new people in APB is not hard, you pretty much know everyone or recognized everyone since the school size is not as big as other high schools we might know of. What matters is that the school is built in a way that the students who attend APB feel welcomed. George said, “This school has good teachers and they know what they are doing.” George expresses how he believes teachers’ skills and experience are very good because they give lesson plans that are prepared and not a last minutes lesson whereas they do not know what they are teaching their students.

School policies are essential to APB in order to maintain a stable balance with the students. Some students at APB opposed the policies that have been made because they are not mature restrictions for high schoolers. Ashley mentioned, “The school policies sucks and they are policies for students who are in middle school for example, taking away student’s cell phones.” However, other students believe that APB rules and policies help the school maintain the idea of student focus on their education rather than unimportant matters. George said, “They are strict enough without going too far.” As George some students are fine with APB rules and policies.

Being a high school freshman is like being a baby who has came to a new world and is opened to a new experience. As your first year goes by, you will soon become leaders and build a new set of traits. As freshman get through their first year of high school, they have just took the first big step into their future. Overtime, their high school experience will be the unexpected and build the person they turned out to be by senior year. Freshman year is the year that starts off everything.