Freshman survival is designed to help freshman to be successful throughout high school. You will learn what chants, where places are inside the building, what teachers you should go to for certain things. And just overall how to have a good high school experience.  

Head principle, Jerry Kalina has organized the freshmen survival scripts for the past 15 years.   

 “It started about 15 years ago when I had heard about it and started reading about it and decided to try it out here,” Kalina said. 

Since freshmen year is such an awkward time, students may become introverted and choose not to reach out to others. For senior Jake Simmons, this program is helpful and is important because he gets a chance to give back and help the younger generation.  

“In our group, our freshmen [are] really quiet, but I think that it’s really important to feel comfortable in our school since they are new,” Simmons said.  

Freshman Alex Morris respects the contribution made by the seniors but isn’t quite sure it’s for him.  

“I think for other people yeah it is, but for me I think it’s more self-explanatory,” Morris said. “For a lot of people, it is helpful for them to get involved and how to make their friends involved.” 

 Most freshmen think the time used with the seniors isn’t needed and maybe dumb, so they end up paying less attention, but when the important things are being talked about, they always have one ear open listening in even if it seems to be untrue.  

“It really helped.” Simmons said, “I didn’t really pay attention a whole lot to be really honest but when I was paying attention, they were giving god advice like what cheers to do at all the games or where to go if needed help.” 

Freshman survival was meant to make our freshman feel like they know our school and can be at ease without having to frantically go from one place to the other.  

“It was intended to just help our incoming 9th graders to learn about our high school, how it functions, where they can go for certain stuff, and most importantly who they can see for different things,” Kalina said.  

Kalina oversees different scheduling problems and trying to work out the different kinks that are going on. It’s not easy putting more seniors in groups when there isn’t a direct ratio of advisements, so he must make the groups just a little bit bigger than intended. 

“Some of the scheduling problems were one, way too many seniors for only twenty-two advisements and two, some of our seniors are in academies so they can’t be a part of it or they might be at Metro through the Metro jump start program,” Kalina said.    

Freshman survival is just a time to show our freshman a little love, a little bit of guidance, and a little attention because sometimes we forget they’re there. We might boo them at football games, but we really are there to watch our classmates succeed and thrive and that is what our freshman survival program is for.