Life as a Transfer student at WHS

By: Christopher Light

Everyone has their group of friends, everyone has their high school years planned out but then there is me and the few other transfer students who’ve got a lot more to figure out, even the teachers know that school isn’t where every student wants to be this. 

Mr. Martin, an English teacher at WHS said, “Not only are they navigating the after-high school planning process and the process of taking my class but their also navigating the process of being a new student with a new schedule, new faces, new social constructs, new set of rules”.

As a transfer student, you have to adjust to everything, WHS works much different than my previous school and other transfers could have the same situation. For example WHS is much bigger and the schedules work completely different, where WHS has the A/B days, my old school had 2 hour days with 3 classes and regular days with 5 classes.

The hardest thing for me to adjust to was how the teachers gave work. At WHS, many teachers use Google Classroom to give assignments to their students. This was really difficult to adjust to at first because throughout my years at school I never used Google Classroom or even had a laptop/chromebook given to me by a school and many other students that transfer could deal with the same problem.

There are things that transfer students may love about WHS, like the options you have for classes. At my previous school, your biggest choice between classes was if you wanted to take the normal level class or the AP version, it was very boring and straightforward. But here at WHS I have so many choices, my favorite class being journalism instead the same old English class I took every year prior. 

The other thing that any student that transfers to WHS can look forward to is the teachers. The upperclassmen teachers that I have this year are far better than any teachers that I have had in my prior years of high school for one reason. They try and connect with the students they realize school isn’t fun, it’s boring at best, so they connect and joke with students to make the classes more enjoyable and they are able to build a better connection and which makes the class a better experience to be in especially as a transfer student to have a teacher trying to get to know who you are.

The worst part by far about transferring schools for anyone at any point in their life is the high chance you don’t know anyone, which in my case is true. I have zero friends in the school so far no one to talk to no one to hangout with at best I pass by people in the hall and they say hi. 

I think Mr. Martin said it the best because he too had experience as a new kid. “You have the academic pressures, social pressures, the pressures that come with age in general and when you throw on the fact that your trying to build a brand new social circle on top of that, that can be really daunting.”

But overall, WHS is a great school, it’s much more of a stress free environment compared to my old school where you felt like every assignment was a competition and the school is filled with students so eventually I will find some people I can relate to even as the new kid and on behalf of all new kids out there have someone say hi in class to try and get to know is really nice and it gives us a bit of confidence to talk to more people.