The Beginning Of School Brings Waves Of Emotions

School starting brings a new wave of emotion, and everyone is feeling something different. Students may be happy or excited for the return to school, whereas some may even be overwhelmed and stressed to see what the new year brings for them. 

Everyone in the school has a different perspective to looking at the new school year, some in a positive way. According to Northlake Behavioral Health System, the beginning of school allows students to receive a fresh start where they can set new goals and create new experiences. It also states that a fresh start allows students to get a chance to build new relationships with their teachers and friends, which allows students to have a new set of motivation in them. As a result students have something to look forward to, feeling excited and ready to attend school. 

Janvi Parmar (09) shared her thoughts on returning to school, “At first I was really excited and nervous, but after a a couple of days and getting used to the schedule, I felt not that nervous.” 

“I was excited for all the dances and stuff, and I was going to spend time with my friends.” Parmar revealed.

She speaks for many students here at JFK, revealing that nervousness is common to feel, but so is excitement to return back and attend so many events with friends.

Although people may feel excited about coming to school, not everyone reacts to coming back to school in a positive way. Others may feel different, whether it be stress, anxiety or even pressure. According to Bright Harbor Healthcare, students may experience something called back-to-school anxiety, which usually happens when students are going back to school after a long break. Students may also fear peer pressure, social anxiety, or even past experiences they have feared. As a result students may be overwhelmed when returning back to school. 

Myan Nguyen (09) stated, “I felt really excited but also nervous because I didn’t know how well I’ll be doing in high school, and it's a brand new school for me.” 

Nguyen explained the unfamiliarity of the school playing a big role in how she felt when coming, “I think what made me excited was meeting my friends again because over the summer I didn’t get to meet them a lot,” despite being nervous, she explains how she felt excited to be back.

Ms. Wasser-Tung, librarian at JFK, shared thoughts commonly passed to her at the beginning of school, she explained her love for summer, “It’s really hard to adjust, to come back to work.“ 

  Although, despite the difficulty of coming back to school, she feels happy to be back. She elaborated that students at John F Kennedy are really kind and that she is happy to interact with them.

“It’s often a really rough transition for me cause it's two very different ways that I live,” Mx. Teguia, an English teacher at JFK reveals. “There are a lot of parts of my job that I really like, and there are a lot of things that are really stressful especially at the very beginning.”

Mx. Teguia explained that teachers do not get it easy when they are coming back to school, so much so they only receive one day without any meetings to get everything set up,   including all the curriculum plans.   It means that we often are working a lot of extra hours in that first week, we stay after and you know we don’t get paid for that, you know that kinda stuff,” Teguia adds, further explaining the pressure on the teachers.  

There is so much work, that teachers even tend to work during their break, “...we also have five hours of online training to do from all these different topics, I did those over, before we came back.”

When Mathew Ikei, psychologist at JFK, is asked how he feels about the return of school, he states, “I feel great, I feel reenergized and excited for the new school year…” 

He explains how going to summer allows him to recharge after a tiring school year, but regardless he feels great to be back. 

When asked about the different generation and class reactions to the upcoming school year, he mentioned how each class has their own struggles and experiences. 

“A lot of it depends on what class they're in, cause the freshman usually really nervous, you know, they have no idea what’s going on,” Ikei states, when asked what emotions he commonly sees within students, “The juniors and the seniors are a lot more confident.”

Despite the differences in emotions the classes face, he says that most of the students he consults with are happy to be back to school.

Among all, when asked who students should manage anxiety, and who to refer to for help, Ikei says, “I would recommend any students to just visit their counselor. They are very accessible people and they are very experienced, very good at providing whatever kind of support a student needs. They’ve been here for a long time so they know the community very well.”

To reach counselors, students can book an appointment by scanning the QR code outside the counselor’s room located near the front office. If you are looking for someone your age, you can scan the qr code for peer counseling, located in every classroom at JFK on a bright pink paper. 

Photo by Maggie Yu | Students takes a Polaroid to capture returning back to school.