ARRIVING TO A NEW SCHOOL
BY DANA COLLINS
Being a new student can be very stressful and can
sometimes be harmful to a person. When new
students walk into a school for the first time, all they
think about is who they’ll talk to first, who they’ll sit
with in class or at lunch, and this is all new students
think and worry themselves with. Students feel
scared when they come to a new school, because
they are more concerned with finding friends than
anything else. In their minds, if they don’t find
someone to talk to then they will become an
“outcast”- a person who is not socially accepted.
Mina Marinkovic, a new Serbian student at SLAS
explained her outlook for this year as a new student,
“My expectations for this year are that I want to make
a lot of new good friends and I also want to focus on
my studies to earn good grades.”
is the case, which is not always true, these things could
lead a student to become withdrawn or anti-social.
Not all students have a hard time fitting in though,
some students make new friends almost
immediately, and now that the fear of not having any
friends are over, students begin to get concerned
about their appearance. Students want to fit in with
everyone and want what others have to be “cool.”
This could stress out a student as well because they
might not have as expensive things as their friends
and this could cause students to have a lot of self
doubt.
“I like how everyone is close because of how small
our school is," said Ricalyn Sandoval, an 11th grade
student at SLAS. She added, "It feels like a big family
because everyone knows each other and is willing to
help each other even when some people have the
Being new to a strange environment can affect a problem of a language barrier.”
student in many ways. New students often think
about their social lives before anything else which Being a new student can cause a lot of problems and
means that their grades will receive a negative impact be very stressful, but it can also be a great experience
due to lack of concentration in class and pressure and opportunity to learn and to better understand
from their parents. When coming to a new school the circumstances of others. Students shouldn’t feel
where there might not be a lot of other new students, self-conscious about what others think and how they
it becomes harder to find new friends because all the look, but think about having fun and keeping their
old students would already have their own friends. grades up should be their priorities at school.
This could be stressful because people tend to feel
like people are looking, staring or gossiping about
them when they are alone in public areas. When this
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