Freshmen First Thoughts: On First Week Of High School

By: Jazrine Nieto and Rachael Vilhauer

August 15th, 2024 was the first official day of school for Redwood, and there were hundreds of new freshmen coming into the community who have now completed their first full week of high school.

Noah and Micah Seitz, ‘28, are freshman twins that are involved in band. Noah says, “meeting a lot of new people and having fun” is what he is looking forward to the most.

Micah’s initial impression of his first day of school was that, “it was nice but it was really tiring because I was tired from band camp but other than that it was fun.”

The pressure of school did not seem to be as hard as it came off in the beginning. Noah says, “it’s a lot less menacing than I was thinking it would be” and Micah was on the same page, he says, “[highschool] is a little bit more fun than I thought it would be.”

For their first high school rally they definitely had very different takes on their experience with it. Noah says, “it was cool, it was really dark though” while Micah says, “for me specifically it was really boring because sadly I was straight in the middle of the band, so all [of] the things casted on to the projectors I couldn’t see.”

Brooklyn Bowman, ‘28, is also a freshman in band and she had very unique first impressions about high school on her own.

With such a big school Bowman admits she has doubts because, “it was a lot different than I thought it would be, in a good way because I thought I was going to get lost.”

Bowman speaks highly of the water polo team. She says, “it’s really fun, I really like it and yeah I made a ton of friends on the team.”

Looking into the future for the band a little bit Bowman says, “I’m really looking forward to our [band’s] Six Flags trip” that will be happening in the spring.

Her idea of high school she says, “It was a lot different than I thought it would be, in a good way because I thought I was going to get lost.”

Bowman is already very involved in school activities, she says, “I’m doing band, water polo, and I’m going to do swim,” so she will have a very busy schedule for her first year. 

Iliana Razo, ‘28, is a freshman sibling of one of our very own senior football players Ricardo Razo.

Razo had a very different take of her fast day than Bowman and the twins. Razo says, “it was boring because it was just a bunch of work.” 

Despite of her first day Razo says she, “made a new friend in her ELA class.”

We asked her if she expected high school to be different from what she imagined she responds with, “No I thought it was going to be worse but it’s not as bad and I wasn’t really nervous about anything.”

Razo was one of the freshmen who got to view the rally from a different perspective and she says, “it was fun, I liked seeing the videos that they made and all the activities they did.”

She is looking forward to the “sports and clubs.”

Razo plans on trying out for our Redwood Soccer team and joining the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) this year. 

Best of luck to these freshman and all of class of ’28 this year!

Tags: classof2028, features, first day of school, Freshman, gigantea, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, visalia ca