The question of whether freshman year is the best depends on many choices made along the way. It also varies from person to person; opinions of Choate students about their freshman years are as diverse as the student body itself. As a freshman, some students chose to take a sixth course in order to challenge and prepare themselves for the future; at the same time, there were freshmen who took only five and were having the times of their lives.
Freshman year is what seniors call the “experimenting year.” Your grades aren’t taken as seriously as the last three years; therefore, it’s a time of exploration, of finding where you belong in Choate. And to be frank, being the youngest has its own advantages and drawbacks. Most of the time, no one can earn a leadership position as a freshman because of their lack of experience and involvement in the school community.
But every cloud has a silver lining: freshmen will gradually gain experience through the years by getting to meet and know people, and the first year is the best time to do so. Being the youngest, no one will blame you for your insecurity and inexperience. Like a baby that fails to eat on its own, admitting that you don’t know how to do something is completely normal. Freshman year is an open opportunity to learn and perfect oneself.
To be a freshman is also to be amazed by new things every day. In his description of “radical amazement,” the great theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel once said: “Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually.” Freshmen are living under this exact concept of “radical amazement”: The things that upperclassmen don’t consider significant or worth noticing, freshmen take in with a genuine surprise and curiosity. Having a heavy workload, following a dress code, and going to SAC dances and formal balls are all so familiar to other students, but so strange for freshmen. We are oftentimes more dedicated and energetic in the things we do, not so much because we like everything, but because we are doing it for the first time. Freshman year is like taking your first music lesson: the first few moments you hold the instrument in your hands, you feel the responsibility of the hard work it will take to master a simple music piece. As you go take more lessons and the difficulty of your repertoire increases, the repetition of music notes and weekly practice sessions wear you out. They don’t have the same magical quality they had at the start.
We are now three months away from being sophomores. Some people approach the summer cheerfully and confidently, knowing that they have lived their freshman year to the fullest; others leave with small regrets, but with similar high hopes for a brand new year in the fall. That’s the funniest thing about freshman year: you don’t understand its significance until it’s over.
