A new year, a new class of freshmen walk into high school for their first time. The class of 2026 will start their thrilling, stressful, exciting, and demanding freshman year and they will have to adapt to the new workload, new teachers and new building.

In middle school, there are no AP classes, less homework and more responsibility. High school honors and advanced placement classes require much more classwork, homework, and studying, and freshmen can struggle with this change of pace. “The classes are more demanding and give a lot more homework than middle school,” freshman Megan Lomotan said.

Time management and balance are essential to help relieve the stress and have fun while also receiving good grades.

High school is significantly larger than middle school, both physically, and in class size. With three floors and over 2,000 students, the magnitude of high school compared to Cabin John or Frost is large. “The worst thing is that the hallways get too crowded and the school is so big I got lost at first,” Lomotan said.

However, high school brings fun perks, like pep rallies, homecoming, spirit weeks, and over 100 different clubs to join. “The pep rally was my favorite thing so far because I was able to show a lot of school spirit and dress in my class colors,” freshman Annalise Yi said.

Another exciting aspect of high school is sports. Football games and joining teams are activities that students can get involved in as soon as freshman year. “I am on the  girls’ varsity soccer team and I love the team and people so much and right now we’re 2-0 and I hope to continue with that record,” Yi said.

Like all things, improvement can be made, and the freshmen already have suggestions for the future. “I think Wootton could improve on advertising the spirit weeks and try to improve the school spirit because I think it would make school so much more fun and engaging,” Lomotan said.

In addition to a new freshman class, a new freshman administrator has also started. Elizabeth Rodgers has had support from Principal Doug Nelson and the other school administrators as she navigates her way through leading the freshman class. “I’m learning and fine tuning my skills at having difficult conversations with students as opposed to adults in the office. I am learning that I have to be OK with not knowing how the day is going to go in the morning, unlike when I was a teacher. I have no clue what I am going to face, which is a learning curve but is also exciting,” Rodgers said.

She said her office is open for advice, conversation or anything students need to talk about. “​​Having homecoming early was great because I was at the front and I could see every single person coming in. I could see the freshman and put the names to the faces. Hopefully more people will come into my office for more positive reasons instead of problems,” Rodgers said.