In with the New: We survived our Freshman year!

From Freshman by Corinne Mucha

Being a Freshman is scary, and hard.  Here you are at the bottom of the social ladder and already people are asking you questions like, “What do you want to do with your life after high school?”  And you’re thinking, “Dude, let’s see if I can even survive my Freshman year before we start thinking about 4 years from now.”  In the spirit of Been There, Survived That: Getting Through Freshman Year of High School (written by real teens) and Freshman Tales of 9th Grade Obsessions, Revelations and Other Nonsense (by Corinna Much), we present you real tales from our Freshman year of high school . . .

I Was in a Band!
My best friend Teri and I were obsessed with a little band known as Duran Duran.  Yes, we were basically One Direction obsessed, but the band was Duran Duran.  We ran home from school one day to make sure we didn’t miss the world premiere of their newest video.  I saw them in concert – and hyperventilated.  And like any good Duranie (yes, that’s indeed what we Duran Duran fans called ourselves), we started a band named after one of their more obscure songs: Crime and Passion.  Our friend Kristi was Izzy Krime and I was Pemar Passion and we were Krime and Passion.  It’s okay, you can laugh.  I understand.  Here’s the best part: none of us sang, none of us played an instrument.  Actually, I am not sure how we even remotely qualified as a band, but we were one!!

But can you imagine my telling this story as a comic book?

Freshman Tales by Corinne Mucha are Freshman tales told in comic form.  It is a quick and fun read for reluctant readers, but will be relate-able to all Freshmen.  The synopsis says this: Annie has just started high school and she’s a mess.  Her older brother has told her that her freshman year will strongly affect the rest of her life, and if that’s true her future looks grim: She’s a loser at sports, jealous of everyone, and has totally fallen in love with her best friend’s older brother.  When she gets cast as a moaning, hunched-over old lady in the school play, she starts to forget about the rest of her life.  Now she just wants to make it through freshman year.

What Annie needs is a copy of Been There, Survived That: Getting Through Freshman Year of High School, which is written by real teens.  Been There is divided into 3 sections: Social advice, Academic advice, and Practical advice.  This is a very practical guide for not only your Freshman year, but just your middle school and high school years in general as only some of the advice would specific to your Freshman year.  The advice is real, and you can tell it is written by real teens.  What’s the number 1 thing not to do while making new friends? Fart of course.  And yet there is some real honest, raw and heartfelt advice given here: For instance, it can be really disorienting when your best friend since 3rd grade starts eating lunch somewhere else . . . But your friend’s behavior probably has very little to do with you.  Maybe he’s wanting to expand his own circle of friends. . . Friends come and go, and losing and gaining friends is all part of the experience of growing up and . . . surviving high school (page 18).

Together Freshman Tales and Been There, Survived That make a good bundle of resources for new, or about to be new, Freshmen.  You can put these titles on a resource booklist guide for starting high school and take them with you when you set up your display table at Freshman orientation.  You do go to your local high school for Freshman orientation and meet the teacher night, right?  If you don’t, contact your local high school(s) and ask them if you can set up a display table promoting your library, various resources, and – of course – these titles!

Freshman: Tales of 9th grade obsessions, revelations and other nonsense by Corrine Mucha. Published by Zest Books. ISBN: 97800-9819733-6-4

Been There, Survived That: Getting through Freshman year of high school written by Real Teens (There is a flip book inside!) Published by Zest Books. ISBN: 978-09790173707

Filed under: Collection Development, Freshmen, Reader's Advisory, Zest Books