Life was so much easier when I was a freshman. Well, at least that’s what I currently think, after undergoing Senior year stress for about four months now.

I remember some of the stuff from freshmen year clearly, but most of it seems like a blur at this point.

As a four-month standing senior at Pinole Valley, I think that I’ve kind of isolated myself from my prior high school years. Ever since, this school year started, I haven’t looked back, and sometimes I really can’t figure out how I managed to survive 3 years of chaos to this day.

In my opinion, my freshman year was pretty average. From what I could remember,  I didn’t do much, besides go to class, hang out with friends and spend countless hours on my phone.

I decided to take a journey to freshman year by interviewing a few freshmen at Pinole Valley High School, in an effort to convince myself that life was in fact so much easier back then.

Every day, I wake up at exactly 6:45, I hit the snooze button about 50 million times, and I never get out of bed until 7 am. When I realize what time it is, I rush out of bed, fix it up, get myself together and grab breakfast to go. I hop into my car and make it to school by 7:45 in order to find parking.  When I asked Catherine Johnson, a freshman at Pinole Valley High school, about her morning routine she said, “I wake up at 6:30 in order to make it to A period on time. I plan my outfit the night before in order to have more time in the morning, and I always have breakfast at home.”

Arriving at school has been something that I’ve been dreading this year. I can’t find the motivation in me to wake up and be excited about a new day of learning. I’ve found myself stuck in the same loop of routine, that at this point I’m just sick and tired of it. I come to school every day, Jam-packed with a six-class schedule consisting of 3 AP Classes (AP Statistics, AP Language, and AP Government), Journalism, and Law. My schedule seems really overwhelming right now, and it feels like I’m drowning in the overload of work. When I asked, Cameron Moses, a freshman at Pinole Valley High school, about his schedule, it made me miss how easy my workload was freshman year. I take, “Biology, P.E, Journalism, English 1, Geometry, and Spanish,” he said.

Lunch Time can be the busiest time of all for me. While other freshmen like Cameron Moses and Catherine Johnson enjoy the company of their friends by just sitting around in the lunch tables, I am either running weekly meetings for three clubs and/or participating in other activities or doing homework to alleviate some of the stress I can already feel coming later on in the day. Sometimes I miss not having anything to do, but my soul feels much more nurtured knowing that I’m doing something impactful around here, and I couldn’t imagine myself not leading anything.

My after-school activities vary depending on the day. If I don’t have meetings, I usually make my way over to the gym or I go home and take 6-hour naps in an effort to recuperate from a long tiring day. Towards the end of the week, I work, so I’m pretty much kept busy. I typically do homework after I wake up, and I don’t go to sleep until about 1 in the morning. Calista McClinon, another freshman, said she usually goes to the park, does homework, and watches Netflix until 1 or 2 am. On the other hand, Trevor Johnson gets home exhausted from basketball practice, finishes his homework, and then goes to sleep at about 11 pm.

I am calculating that the time I am now putting in to my workloads will pay great dividends for my future.