Dear Class of 2028 (aka Froshies):

Welcome to the best and worst years of your life! In these hallowed halls, you’ll find your future friends, mentors, and passions. As your Editors-in-Chief for this year, we’re here to provide three years of profound experience to help you navigate the endless opportunities and challenges that you’ll encounter this year. 

Although it may seem daunting entering a school of four separate buildings and over 2000 students, we assure you that the next year will fly by faster than you can imagine. We encourage you to keep a lookout for the following activities, which we view as our most memorable moments from freshman year.

Romeo and Juliet: 

Jessica: After reading the decorated Shakespeare play in English class, you’ll be assigned to put on your own performance of a selected scene. You’ll reenact some of the most romantic and tragic moments from literary history: Mercutio’s death, Tybalt’s death, Romeo’s death, and Juliet’s death. (There’s a lot of death.) 

I vividly remember our group’s performance — the WiFi had stopped working, so instead of using the loudspeaker and projector, we scrambled to play romantic violin music on my phone while Eileen Ho/Juliet chugged her sleeping potion. Whatever scene you’re assigned, putting on your own production while dressed as Elizabethan-era star-cross’d lovers will prove to be simultaneously challenging and satisfying.

Cookie Mining Lab:

Jahnavi: After taking that traumatizing Oceanography unit test, our Earth science class was pleasantly surprised to walk into a classroom full of Chips Ahoy cookies later that month. To simulate real mining operations, you purchase “land” (cookie) and “mining tools” (toothpicks) from the bank. Your objective is to extract the cleanest, most intact chocolate chips from the cookie without touching the cookie too much. 

Although the lab seemed easy enough, our group flipped half of our cookie on the table on our first try! Even though we failed miserably at the lab, we were still rewarded with a fresh cookie at the end of class to eat (thanks, Mr. King!). All of us left class happy that day — mostly because of the free cookie, but also because we had such a fun time!

Turning in the FRP: 

Maya: After one month of exhausting Noodletools, another month of scrambling to write the notorious Freshman Research Paper (FRP), and 28 more hours of rushing to create an annotated bibliography, I was done! Writing a 1090-word essay on the Enlightenment Era with everything you need to know about Catherine the Great, Voltaire, and the feudal system wasn’t even half as bad compared to how sophomores claimed it was. 

The big and scary upperclassmen love to terrorize freshmen with horror stories from their year. But honestly, we wouldn’t be true upperclassmen if we didn’t fulfill our job to pass on some generational trauma. Nevertheless, if you push through and put in your best effort, the FRP is totally doable! If anything, it will prepare you for the inevitable Junior Research Paper (JRP), which thousands of students have endured. 

Some final thoughts…

Really take in and enjoy every moment—make some new friends, join The Musket, and get in the pond with some waders. The next few years of your life are going to be incredibly rewarding.

Yours truly,

The EICs