How Steffen’s 8th Graders Feel About High School

By Maya Dutta and Aurko Ghose

With the upcoming 8th grade graduation we know that the next step is high school. But how do Steffen’s 8th graders feel about that? It’s well known that high school can be hard, fun, very enlightening, and it paves the way for the rest of your life. We talked to 9 of our 8th graders to see how they feel about the impending transition.

We interviewed John Daniels, Ellie Kuwabara, Jeridon Clark, Oliver and Gabriel Getzel, Aahana Singh, Hannah McLellan, and Christian Torres, and this is their two cents.

Which school are they going to?

Marquette High School

Homestead High School

Are they doing any sports or extracurricular activities?

One common theme between everyone we interviewed was having a pretty good idea of what sports and extracurriculars they wanted to do.

Almost all of them had sports plans, including golf, basketball, gymnastics, volleyball, tennis, football, and track.

On the extracurricular side, choices ranged from investing and robotics to chinese club and National Honors Society.

How do they feel about going to high school?

Overall everyone we talked to was excited, with many also being nervous for next year.

Hannah said, “It just feels like going from 7th to 8th grade except it’s going from 8th to 9th grade.”

Another student, Ellie, told us, “The first week will be nerve-wracking because I have to find all my classes, but after that, I think it will be pretty fun.”

Why are they feeling these specific emotions?

Q: Why are you nervous?

According to Aahana, “It’s different from how the school system was in Japan, but that’s pretty much it.”

Another student also answering this question, Jeridon Clark, said, “I’m just nervous about actually finding my classes.”

Q: Why do you think it’ll be easy?

Oliver answered, “I’m going to do all the hard classes the first two trimesters, so the third trimester will be really easy.”

Hannah also thinks it will be easy because it is just different classes, so it’s nothing new in her opinion.

How hard do they think high school will be?

According to Ellie, “It will be harder, especially junior year.”

John said that it would be harder because he’s going to Marquette, a school extremely focused on academics.

And Gabriel stated that things would be more difficult classes-wise but there would be no direct challenge.

Everyone expected an increase in difficulty, but nobody thought it would be too much to handle.

As you can see we have differing views on going to high school, but all of us agree that it’s going to be exciting. Some are nervous because it will be harder to find where their classes are due to the bigger campus, others feel it will be easy and similar to 8th grade and it’s just different classes teaching different things. It’ll undoubtedly be a big change, but Steffen’s 8th graders feel like they’re more than ready for the coming year.

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“Mequon-Thiensville School District - Homestead High School Athletic Field.” Nicholas & Associates, 11 Oct. 2021, nicholasquality.com/projects/homestead-high-school-athletic-field.