OC HIGH / STUDENT NEWS AND VIEWS : Befriend the New Kids in School

Each fall, as class levels change, students look around to see how they will fit in this school year. Seniors walk and stand proud because this is “their year.” Juniors are happy to finally be upperclassmen, and sophomores are confident in themselves having already been here one year. The freshmen travel in large groups, nervous and unsure of what’s going on. It’s always hardest for the freshmen, right?

Wrong.

Freshmen have their friends from junior high to talk to and hang out with. But try being a junior in a new school where you don’t know a soul.

All of your classmates know the school and everyone in it, backward and forward. They’ve all got their friends and their plans for the weekend are almost final. Meanwhile, you sit back and watch, listening to see if something they say sounds even vaguely familiar.

Hearing stories of spending the summer on the beaches of Mazatlan, or a two-month tour of Europe, you flash back to how your summer months were spent packing and unpacking.

Stuffing your entire life into cardboard boxes and leaving all of your friends behind is hard enough. Entering a new school--so foreign it might as well be in another country--and starting all over is even harder.

And it’s hard even though staff and students are, for the most part, fairly friendly. Most of the time, that is.

No one who has ever been new to any school, job or community has ever been run down by the “welcome wagon.”

After all, familiarity is security. Why should natives venture out of their little cliques? They feel perfectly comfortable in their tightknit groups of friends and see no reason why they should go out of their way to make someone else feel accepted. And they shouldn’t have to. But they also shouldn’t look at someone new as an outcast.

As you sit alone in what you thought would be a place that’s quiet and out off the way, you see a big group of people coming toward you. After several seconds of staring, one girl attempts a half-smile . . . and keeps right on walking.

In her mind she thinks: “Why would anyone want to spend lunch alone?” As if it were a choice. “Oh well, she’ll make friends eventually.” But if everyone carries the same mentality, then who is supposed to befriend new kids?

At the same time, a new student can’t expect everyone else to make the effort.

So next time you make eye contact with someone . . . smile. It won’t kill you, I promise. And who knows--you might just make a new friend.