Freshman Year!

Last Thursday, Austen started his freshman year of high school. He wasn't nervous or concerned if anyone was in his classes even though I kept asking him. Recently, we had toured the school with him since there were many renovations that they wanted to show off to the community. Let me just say there was no rhyme or reason to the numbering system for classes or for lockers. Hallways led to dead ends and then there was a Room 500 on the second floor. All I can say is I am glad I didn't attend that school! I had heard most kids don't even use their lockers because they are so far away from most of their classes. Luckily Austen has three classes by his locker which I had to mark on his schedule which room was closest to it. Also, lucky that Tom knew that each classroom had to have a map of the entire high school with room numbers (I guess something they are required to do) so we took pictures and used that to navigate our way around the school for orientation. You think they would have thought to supply people with maps! We actually printed our own after and gave them to Austen to use for his first day of school. So that was our intro to the school that was probably built in the early 1900s with minimal renovations or ones that were haphazardly added onto. You'd think in our community, we'd be attending a much nicer high school. Their academics might be high and their new pool is amazing and their new Jumbo Tron for instant replays on the football field is cool but the rest of the school is a dump. 

Anyway, Austen started his freshman year by missing the bus. No he wasn't happy to take the bus (and have to wear a mask on it). He was always close enough to walk or for us to drive him but now since his school is a bit farther away and it would conflict with getting the girls off to school and picking them up, we told him that he has to take the bus. He's less than thrilled so when he announced he couldn't find his schedule a few minutes before leaving for the bus, he didn't seem too upset as he knew Tom or I would take him. He was probably secretly happy. Taking the bus is a right of passage. He has to do it. Anyway, 10 minutes later his schedule was found after Tom dumped out his laundry basket and found it in the shorts pocket he wore for orientation. Then he got a nice ride to school with plenty of time to find his locker. 

The school day went well and he said he was only about 5 minutes late for one class because he couldn't find the room. That's not bad considering that one of his friends sat through almost the entire period before realizing he was in the wrong class. 

It's an extra long day for Austen too as he joined the high school soccer team so he practices til about 5:30pm after school every day unless they have games. That's a lot of gear and a lot of food he has to lug around too and another reason he needs to go to his locker in the morning. He said some of his teammates carry around two backpacks - one for soccer and the other for school. Crazy! More in future posts regarding his high school soccer season. But so far so good on freshman year.