Freshman year is a year of changes; new school, new teachers, new friends, new morals, and new beginnings. It can be filled with memories you will never forget. Especially on your first day…

It’s safe to say that not everyone has the most graceful first day of high school: just ask freshman John Skaba.

Skaba was nervous yet relaxed on his first day of freshman year, mostly because he is a confident individual but also because he had already, so many friends going to school with him.

“I was excited to start high school, couldn’t had come any sooner,” said Skaba.

Skaba was unsure about his opinion on the seniors and juniors yelling at him with big green and gold posters as he got out of his car, but he was sure about Blanchet.

“The minute I walked into Blanchet, I knew I made the right decision,” said Skaba. “I remember thinking the school was so much bigger than I had originally thought.”

As the classes started and John met his teachers, he found some dislikes within the schools.

“I love Mr. McDonald,” said Skaba. “He was probably my favorite teacher I had met that day. But I also met some teachers that I knew I would dread coming to their class for the rest of the year.”

Finally given a break at lunchtime, Skaba and his friends sat at the lunch table telling stories about their days so far.

“I remember one of my friends telling me that some guy in his class had broken his back pack from the amount of supplies he had brought,” said Skaba.

John thought about how much that would’ve sucked to have to carry around all the supplies you had brought in your hands and felt bad for his poor classmate. But I bet that student felt worse for John later on.

“I had fallen down two sets of stairs and walked into the wrong class about 4 times,” said Skaba, “one of them was the same classroom too!”

After Skaba’s 1B class, he felt that walking down the stairs like normal wasn’t as interesting as trying to hop from step to step. So, John hopped on one foot down the steps from 3rd floor to 2nd floor, near Bilanko’s room, trying to land perfectly on the corner of the steps.

Safe to say it didn’t work out in John’s favor.

“I missed the stepped and just toppled forward,” said Skaba. “It hurt so bad. And after hitting the bottom of the first part of the steps, I realized how bad the idea was.”

Lucky for Skaba , he decided to walk the rest of the steps normally. So John continued along his way, not realizing his shoe had become untied from the fall. John had slipped once again…

“I felt very dumb, but hey at least it made my day interesting,” said Skaba.

Ignoring the embarrassment, Skaba still walked through the halls with a smile on his face with the bruises all down his arms and legs.

But just when Skaba  thought he had enough embarrassment for one day, he walked into the wrong classroom sat down and realized it wasn’t his class until 30 minutes after the period had started.

“I saw all my friends in the class and I thought I saw that I had it that period on my schedule,” said Skaba. “It wasn’t until after attendance had been taken and double checking my schedule with the teacher, that I had realized I was looking at the wrong period.”

Although John’s day was full of mishaps, mistakes, tricky stares and confusing classroom numbers. John Skaba was still excited for the next four years, and looking forward to forgetting more of his classes and even falling down the stairs a couple more times.

“After I got home from school, I raved to my parents about how excited I was for this year,” said Skaba. “I never regretted my decision once.”