Austin Scholar #116: 6 things I wish I knew my freshman year
& what I've been up to
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
6 things I wish I knew my freshman year
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been up to...
We're in the middle of wrapping up the school year at Alpha High, but things are pretty quiet, so I don't have any big updates. Instead, here are the things I’m looking forward to over the next week: I have some super hard pilates classes lined up, I’m working on my reflection of high school speech for graduation, the AP European History exam is coming up, and I’m getting graduation gifts for both the guides and my friends.
Basically, I’m wrapping up my entire high school experience. Crazy.
I'm also working on getting ahead on some newsletters so I can take a break from weekly writing over the summer. I'm so excited for you to get to read all of those soon!
6 things I wish I knew my freshman year
On that note, I’ve been thinking a lot about my time in high school and how I’ve grown as a person. For example, four years ago I'd never published anything online in my life. I've evolved quite a bit since then.
There are a lot of things that would’ve been helpful to know during my freshman year to make my journey a little easier on my heart and mind.
Here are the 6 most important things I wish I knew my freshman year (you should forward this to the rising freshmen in your life):
Your life will not end with one bad grade
As absolutely cliche as that is, it’s so hard to actually believe.
In my sophomore year, I took AP Calculus BC and studied so hard, but I couldn’t understand the topic of Taylor Series, like, at all. I watched so many videos on the topic and of people solving those types of problems, but I couldn’t crack it.
And because they’re such a big part of the actual AP exam, I did not get the score I wanted that year.
I freaked out.
I’ve always, always tried to get good grades and scores in academics and as college applications got closer, this was a pretty big blow.
But instead of sitting in my misery forever, I dried my tears (yes, I’m the type to cry over a test) and made a plan: do an intensive Calculus course the month before next year’s exam and retake the test. There’s always a way forward, and a lot of the time, if you know you can do better, you don’t have to settle. (I did end up retaking it and I crushed my second try at the exam.)
So let’s say you do get a bad grade. Maybe you studied really hard but freaked out during the exam and didn’t score well. Or maybe you forgot about a quiz. Whatever happened, the most important part of your backup plan is knowing how to problem-solve.
If you’re not feeling too hot about one of your AP courses, figure out what your next steps are (hint: you can either not submit your score OR study to retake it the following year – like I did). If it’s a quiz, figure out an extra-credit plan with your teachers. Knowing how to plan for the worst-case scenario is so important both to the stability of your mental health and to keeping your academics at a high level.
And if you plan, that one test score won’t affect you.
You are safe to take risks
I’m naturally a pretty risk-averse person. I get scared when I don’t know what will happen next. I avoid dangerous situations.
So when it came time for me to send cold emails and requests to some pretty famous people on Twitter/X, I resisted. I avoided posting on Twitter/X at all for six months after I started my newsletter because I was so scared.
But then I realized that this is the best time in my life to take risks.
In high school, you’re fully supported by your parents. You have so much time and energy to put into doing something super cool. Nothing can go that wrong.
So take a deep breath and dive in.
You will get hate, but they don’t know who you truly are
One of the reasons posting on Twitter/X seemed so risky to me was that I didn’t want to get hate – I felt like I couldn’t handle it.
Whenever I would think about someone saying I was stupid or ugly or incompetent or a million other things, I would get such a surge of anxiety in my heart that I’d totally forget about the opportunities I would gain from posting.
Eventually, though, it became a requirement for school. So I had no choice.
The very first time I posted a thread, I freaked out when I hit publish.
And sure enough, I found that I was right to do so. I got a hate comment.
But when I checked to see who was leaving me a hate comment, I realized that the account was literally a porn bot.
It was ridiculous. And all of a sudden, the hate comments seemed like a huge joke. These people didn’t actually know me.
The people who insult you, who make snide comments and tear you down – those people don’t truly know who you are. Sometimes they’re just porn bots trying to get people to click on their profile.
Friendships ebb and flow