Good Advice For Someone Starting High School: What I’m Telling My Younger Brother
My 14-year-old brother’s new locker is three locks up from the top row, so he has to stand on the bottom ledge of the one below it to reach his math textbook. The vinyl Creeper sticker he picked out for the door is peeling at the corner, and he keeps twisting his new student ID lanyard around his wrist so hard his knuckles go pink. He hasn’t said he’s nervous, but when we walked past the cafeteria five minutes earlier, he slowed down and mumbled that all the upperclassmen look like full-grown adults. I drove him to orientation because our mom had a morning shift at the local hospital, so I’ve had plenty of time to think about what I actually want to tell him, no cheesy pep talks included.
First, I said, if the lunch line is too long and standing alone feels like the whole room is staring at you, you can eat your sandwich in the library. I remember my first week at this same high school, I forced myself to sit at the end of tables with people I vaguely knew from middle school, and I ended up not talking for 45 minutes straight, picking at my peanut butter crackers until they crumbled into crumbs. After that, I ate in the back corner of the library for the first six weeks. No one bothered me, I worked on silly crosswords from the newspaper and read old graphic novels, and by the time fall semester rolled around, I met a girl in biology who also liked the same comics, and we started eating together. No one ever asked why I was there alone, and no one cared. I told him you don’t have to force yourself to make a best friend by the end of the first week.
From working part-time tutoring middle schoolers at the local community center, I’ve seen how many parents panic when their kid comes home and says they ate alone. They immediately start asking if they’re being bullied, or sign them up for three new clubs to “put themselves out there.” I get the urge to fix it right away, but the pressure to fit in immediately is way worse than a few weeks of eating alone. If you’re a caregiver sitting with your own kid who’s starting high school, the best thing you can do if they mention eating somewhere quiet is just say, “That sounds way less stressful than the loud lunch room” instead of jumping into problem solving. That small, non-panicked response takes all the weight out of it.
Second, I told him, your first quiz doesn’t matter that much, and small consistent work beats cramming every time. I got a C on my first biology quiz here, because I stayed up the night before playing Mario Kart and crammed for 45 minutes. I cried in my car after class because I thought my whole high school career was ruined, and now I can’t even remember what that quiz was about. The concrete rule I gave him is this: for any test or quiz, spend 20 minutes reviewing your notes the night you take them, and another 20 minutes the night before the test. That’s it. No all-nighters, no writing ten pages of flash cards for a 10-question quiz. And if you get a grade lower than you wanted, it’s not a sign you’re failing at high school.
Again, I see so many parents stressing about freshman year grades like every single one will make or break college applications. The truth is, most admissions officers don’t even weight freshman year grades heavily – they care more about how you perform your last two years, and what you do when you mess up. If your kid brings home a bad first grade, don’t rush to hire a tutor or yell about study habits. Ask if they want to vent over a soda first, then ask what one small thing they want to change for the next one. That’s enough, most of the time. Big overreactions just turn a small bad grade into a big stress about being “not good enough.”
Third, I told him, if anyone asks you to do something you don’t want to do, you don’t need an excuse to say no. You don’t have to lie and say your mom won’t let you go, or you have to study for a test, if you just don’t want to. You can just say “no, I don’t want to” and walk away. I learned this the hard way: when I was a freshman, a group of juniors asked me to come to a party off campus, and I didn’t want to go, so I lied and said I had a family dinner. Two days later I ran into one of them at the mall, and I hid in a clothing store dressing room for 20 minutes to avoid them. That awkwardness was totally avoidable if I’d just said no upfront.
A lot of adults teach kids to soften their no to be polite, but that just leaves kids feeling like they can’t stand up for themselves unless they have a “good enough” reason. If you’re a parent, you can practice this at home with small things. When your kid says no to a family gathering or a playdate they don’t want to attend, don’t make them explain themselves. Just accept it. That builds the habit of trusting their own gut, which is way more useful than any study tip.
By the time we finished shoving his extra notebooks and a pack of granola bars into his locker, he pulled out his phone and said his friend from middle school was waiting for him at the bike rack to check out the football field. He didn’t want me to walk with him, and I didn’t push it – I know better than to hug an incoming freshman in front of other kids. I just leaned against the hallway wall and waved, and he nodded and took off.
I didn’t tell him it’s going to be the best four years of his life, because that’s not true for everyone, and it’s a stupid thing to put on a kid anyway. Some days will suck, some days he’ll skip study hall to get blue raspberry slushies with his friend, some days he’ll fail a test and be fine, some days he’ll still eat in the library just because he likes it quiet. I don’t know how it’s going to go for him – he’s quieter than I ever was, he likes different things, and that’s okay. The three things I told him are the only ones I know for sure are true, and the rest is up to him.
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