In a Bear Facts first, we track a freshman through her first year of high school, Post-COVID style. How did the pandemic affect this Zoomer? The year will decide.

With Spring Break ending and the third quarter coming to a close, the once new freshmen are coming closer to becoming old news upperclassmen with each passing day. Course selections, many group guidance sessions, and big Regents exams coming up in June are preparing the Class of 2026 for the rest of their high school career.

By now, most of Brewster High School’s students have met their guidance counselors and have picked out their courses for next year. For freshmen, new opportunities and options became available to choose from. No longer being confined to the basic courses like a general art class or having the majority of the classes already picked out, 9th graders have now been introduced to a whole new side of education where they can actually dive more into their interests. There are many electives and extra courses offered at BHS, and having all of these choices to choose from is quite overwhelming, especially since this much freedom was never presented to us in middle school.

Getting to choose whether you want to take an AP class or stick to an Honors one, having to consider whether you want to take this elective for half the year or that one that alternates each day, all while trying to make sure you will be able to have a lunch at least every other day can become overbearing to think about. To add on to handling the tsunami of options granted to us, many freshmen also struggle with having to think so far ahead into the future to decide their courses. From personal experience, I had to grasp an idea of which classes I would even consider taking in the latter half of high school to help me pick my sophomore courses now. Though this might not have been the case for everyone, it definitely was for a significant amount of students. Keeping in mind our graduation requirements like having a certain amount of credits and having a certain type of credit has also been something 9th graders had to adjust to. However, the guidance counselors in the high school have done a great job of guiding the grade with all of these impactful decisions by providing numerous resources and insight to us.

Another high school event peering around the corner is the annual New York State Regents Exam. Though the vast majority of the freshman class took the Living Environments Regents last June, some have yet to take a mathematical regents like the Algebra I Regents Exam. This is considered quite the milestone for some and a nightmare for many.  Teachers are gearing up for this big exam, especially after the nice break we had. Piles of review sheets and packets, if they have not already, will most likely take up plenty of space in the folders of students. However, preparing for the Regents means a lot more than just studying for a standardized test. It means that the freshmen are nearing the end of their year, and they will no longer be “the new class” or “the babies of the school.” These last couple months will fly by quickly like the whole school year did, and those Regents are going to be here before we know it.

Even though there is less time left in the school year than we think, it still feels like we freshmen are walking into a whole new building with a whole set of new people in September. It still feels like that it is way too soon for the year to be over and for the freshman class to soon call themselves sophomores, and as much as 9th graders do not want this reality to be true, the course selections and Regents prep are making it evident that is. With only one quarter left to go, the Class of 2026 only has a couple months left until they are no longer the first-year students at Brewster High School.