Anxiety During My Freshmen Year Of High School

​As many students become excited for their first year in high school, it was difficult for me to relate as anxiety began to creep into my life for the first time. I began to question my abilities, if I was even capable of continuing on after high school when I was barely capable of getting through the easiest year of the next 4 of my life. However, Colon’s

The adolescent years are the hardest years lived by everyone. Hormones are raging out of control and thoughts of self doubt are present on your mind at every second. You spend majority of your time enclosed a facility with other teenagers all experiencing the same discomfort. That’s right: high school. HIgh school for me was the final stage in metamorphosis to adulthood. Beginning my my high school career in a brand new school with no familiar faces or friends was a first. For the first time, I was alone. I spent lunches and alone and had no one to work with. At first, it was all so terrifying, borderline embarrassing! But later, despite being by myself, I stopped feeling alone. My focus later stopped circulating around the fact that I was

There are only a few things I don’t like – giant beetles, celery, and talking in front of crowds. I am extremely anxious, so presentations, group work, or talking in class are hard for me. When I go in for appointments, such as interviews, health check-ups, or even course advising, I get nervous and then I start to sweat. When I was young, I had to beg my mom to order my food at restaurants. Even to this day, I still get nervous when I order. It’s hard for me to talk to people because I worry that I will say the wrong thing, make a weird joke, or look like a fool. Many people ask me to speak up or to repeat things because my voice is soft – which makes me more nervous. I live in constant anxiety and I feel like I have no way out. My anxiety has heightened many times throughout my life, but the most prominent event happened in high school. My junior and senior year, I was known as “that girl” whom a lot of boys wanted to get with. One thing happened and then another, and then the story became warped as it was passed from ear to ear. My story and the story that my peers knew were complete opposites.

Staring out above the clouds, my feet are warm and snug in the crafted italian boots, with my skis supporting me on the snow; all the worries of high school and its dysfunctionality are behind me. Strolling through the dark tunnels of high school I walk with a defined strut as if trying to impress my peers. It’s in these halls where I feel the anxiety of the world crashing down on me, but up on the fluffy, white, powdered slopes all of that anxiety is gone; it’s just me and my skis.

In researching anxiety, a complex and abstract topic in itself, I first had to significantly limit the scope of my research and identify a common sample population that could speak to the research at large. I chose members of one high school to represent a common body of data, and I chose the Metroplex region for the purpose of accessibility and ease of data collection. Metro High School was investigated in two ways. First, a survey was conducted to quantify data. Then, an interview was designed using a set of predetermined questions to ask a number of students to produce qualitative data. These two elements, quantitative and qualitative results, could encompass the research question in its entirety. Anxiety in itself cannot be

Being a teenager is hard enough as it for many students with issues such as going to college and having to go on your first date. Many high schoolers can agree that getting through high school is critical with being able to successfully develop socially. You’ll meet new friends in freshman year and start to gain interest in different things. People you knew in middle school may not go to the same high school leaving you stuck and nervous on your first day. However, In the book “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, the main protagonist, Charlie, faces highschool alone with an inability to socialize adequately and has suicidal thoughts from the guilt he has for his Aunt Helen’s death . The traumatic experiences he had to endure before

I think I speak for many people when I say high school is a critical point in one’s life. Coming into high school, things seemed to be tightly-knitted between my peers and I; those of us who had just

Walking into school on my first day of high school, I felt out of place. My face covered in acne, my teeth covered in braces, and the callicks in my hair stuck up through the abnormally thick layer of hair gel that coated them. My middle school social anxiety still ruled over me as I could barely speak with any member of the opposite sex. Yet, I still had an odd confidence about me. I had always been one of the best students in my class, even without ever studying for a test. I viewed high school as a slight uptick from the curriculum I had easily passed in middle school. I was wrong. High school exists as a microcosm of society, in which I originally failed to acclimate myself to the challenges posed to me in a setting of increased

For four long years I felt as if my high school was in a different world in of itself. I had spent that time interacting with an extensive amount of groups, or “cliques”, and getting to know what they do. Through my experiences, I had begun to realize what made this “subculture” high school of sorts run like it did. High school is an incredibly dynamic time for people, and I had changed as a person dramatically from my freshman to senior year. Like many, my freshman year was quite awkward, as remnants of my middle school self remained with me. As time went on, how, I talked to more people and grew out of my passive and shy personality. This did not just randomly happen without reason though. I began to learn and realize who I was and whom I enjoyed talking to in school, which explained why I spent so much time socializing with multiple kinds and groups of people. Everyone’s concept of “normal” was different, and high school was where I learned that lesson and will never forget.

Starting high school, I was the epitome of the phrase “fly on the wall”. Afraid to speak out (or up), join any activities or groups, or, under any circumstances, place myself in the spotlight. Anxieties and doubts flooded my mind and body, and it was clear to anyone who looked my way. This was a struggle that I have faced my whole life, and one that reached its peak during one of the most important periods of my life: high school.

First off, I was not in the slightest degree the same individual in high school as I am today. For instance, I was absolutely ignorant to any comprehension of the high school social system. I expected most people did not like me and the few peers who did were people I am glad to call friends. Being popular is not something I stress over now, not on the account of my social positioning has changed, but rather because it is a subject I find juvenile and shallow. I am writing about this event for the sole reason that it changed the way I carried on with my life. Now that all of that is out of the way, I will proceed with my story.

Let’s rewind through time to when I was a 12-year-old girl starting high school. Not the worst year, surprisingly, because I became friends with a few girls pretty fast. I was happy I was finally out of primary school; I felt more mature and like I had so much liberty. The first year was a pretty dull year, so we can fast-forward to my second year, when I realized high school was a pre-taste of what Hell was like.

By the time I hit high school, I was the outsider of the inside crowd who was always trying to fit in while always feeling left out. I never understood friendships, especially the catty flakiness or shadi-ness that can come with it. So I learned to tuck all my thoughts and feelings in and behaved like everyone else, whether it was good or bad. Let’s just say there was more bad around me than good. I ended my high school year with a few misdemeanors after beating a felony on my criminal record, no graduation, along with a late diploma, and with no desire to go college. If you can read between the lines, you can see that more happened, but I somehow managed to change, though not without a few wake-up calls after.

If I think about who I was at the beginning of junior year, I can’t count the number of times that I spaced out when answering questions about myself. I had never really thought about what really motivated me, and I wasn’t interested in pursuing anything in my life. The “getting to know you” questionnaires that teachers make their students fill out were my nightmare. The people I had ended up surrounding myself with were not the kind of teenagers that I could relate to, and I was wearing, saying, and doing all the wrong things all the time. I came to school wearing uncomfortable clothes because I didn’t feel like I fit in my own skin. Sweatshirts and large t-shirts were a norm for me, because I was worried about my body image. I let my friends take advantage of me. I allowed myself to get hurt, but I ended up forgiving them anyways. It wasn’t just my friends though, as I blamed everyone else for my own problems. I never owned up to my mistakes. I turned on good friends, and created even worse relationships with others around me. Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t a bad kid. I rarely got into trouble with my parents, and my grades were pretty good. I thought I was doing everything right, even though I found myself upset at the end of the day. Outside influencers were making me passive and afraid to stand up for myself. I couldn’t speak or act for myself. To be quite frank, I didn’t know who I was or that I needed to change in order to be happy. My routine of going to school and

People tend to believe that high school is what defines your life. It is where you create who you are and what your future will be, but that isn’t the truth. In high school, I was a person that I didn’t want to be. I was the shy new girl that no one would talk to. On the first day of school I was lucky that someone invited me to lunch. By the end of my first year I had less friends than the fingers on my hands. The few people that knew me in the large school either thought I was mean and rude or they were my friend. I went through the first half of high school not knowing who I was. Eventually I had to move schools and I was tired of being the new girl. I wanted to make people know my name and not be just some face. Unfortunately, my hopes