By Lily Galapon, Stentorian Editor-in-Chief
To The Juniors Who May Be Very Concerned,
What is this? A wall of words faces eye to eye with you… stamped on the floor, outside your new door. It has only been the first day of school, and already a curious pair of pages has traveled its way to your feet. Your eyes hover to the top of this mysterious paper, with a more obscure label: It’s the… Stentorian? The letters of this strange name fold themselves over in your head as you try to bring another foreign item of this school into familiarity.
Perhaps the rumors are true–unicorns do exist, and their secret hoofed society was behind the delivery. Or maybe, it was a ghost long ago from the Hill House… Stay enrolled here to find out until the end of October.
But alas, the hypotheses draw for ages! If you have not already, I demand you to pick me up, as–speaking through the omniscient voice of the Stentorian–we have three important words to message you.
Welcome to NCSSM!
Yeah… you probably have heard this a million times since you moved in already: when you walked through Bryan Lobby, when the seniors helped you move into your dorm room, the list goes on. It is repeated over and over, to optimistically wiggle your adjustment into this new world, until the hyper-enthusiastic greeting has burnt into your skull.
And while you have been constantly bombarded with a cheery, incessant “Welcome!” into this place, you still feel so… uncomfortable. You might be super excited to seize a new adventure of academics, friendships, and explorations! You might also be terrified at how volatile your life is right now, with every aspect changing the present into something so unfamiliar. Or maybe you’re experiencing every single feeling, all at once, like a giant pot anxiously churning in your stomach.
And I get it. From the day you clicked that “Yes!” button in April, it’s almost impossible to not drown when your mind has been flooded with an overwhelming load of information about how every single possible thing part of our school works. Hall meetings. Trying to figure out how exactly you should take a shower. Wait…there’s housekeeping too?! How can I do my physics homework, get through a sea of new clubs, and balance a hundred other things at once when I’m barely able to do my own laundry?
How am I going to live here?
To the junior reading this: It may not seem like it at all, but you are doing just fine. The disordered, chaotic, unharmonious state of your life is normal and to be expected. Coming here can feel like driving a car you’ve always had, and suddenly having every piece become dismantled for you to rethink and rebuild again. But the comforting thing is, 50% of your classmates have been there.
A year ago, I was in your exact footsteps. Our seniors– to you, your grand-seniors, their previous life as a student unicorn transformed to mythical legend as they become immortalized in conversations in the past tense– all told me that it was going to be alright. That I would get over it. Truth be told, what I really needed was for a senior to sit through with me and bear out this state of discomfort instead of brushing it off, because,of course, their junior hardships in retrospect are seen as easier than done (Author’s Note: type “glossing” into the search bar of our website to see when I was freaked out). Just know that it will get better. Life will become normal. I promise! Ask literally anyone around you. But fellow reader, adjusting is such a difficult thing for you to do right now. And I applaud you for your current resilience.
This is the start of your journey here and it is the most surreal part. August serves as the pilot episode; you know this strange place as a campus, not as a community. Where the best friends of your future are still just…faces. And it may seem too simple and good to be true, but really do just stop for a moment and take a breath. You do not have everything figured out right now. But know that you are strong, and no matter how much it may seem like you are failing right now, you were chosen to be here for a reason. You are now in this quest of trying to navigate life—this giant, abstract blob now reshaping before your eyes– and have never felt so uncomfortable in this moment of acclimatizing.
Absolutely nothing is going to come natural to you– and there’s a certain beauty in that. You have this opportunity of starting fresh, with this new life. Yes, this is a very humbling experience. Yes, you will be completely jammed with new information and yet know completely nothing. Yes, this school is going to challenge you; but it will change you for the better.
Take things day by day. And you know what? Make yourself even more uncomfortable than you already are by doing everything scared. There is no turning back now! Talk to new people. Ask an unimaginable amount of questions. Wander around campus. Soak in these days of exploration.
This is the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. And yet, this is the school where your life is about to become magical. So embrace your fears hard. And jump in harder with bravery.
Maius Opus Moveo,
The Stentorian
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