For High School Freshmen, Toughest Test May Be First Day

Intent on Making Their Mark, or Leaving One, Ninth- and 12th-Graders Face Their Futures as Area High Schools Start Up Once Again

Spanish class was finally over, and 14-year-old Anikka Peterson emerged bleary-eyed in a hallway at Potomac Senior High School in Dumfries, wending her way through an elbow-bumping scrum of teenagers. She needed to find her algebra I class but was totally lost.

She sought help from a teacher, who fired off one of those g o-down-the-hallway-it's-the-last-one-on-the-right directives. So Anikka clambered up Stairwell A and briskly walked past some friends and unruly upperclassmen -- "Freshman!" someone yelped at her -- before arriving at the end of the hallway and happening upon . . . Fan Room 314. A utility room.

"Ugh. This is a lot of fun. Not in there," Anikka said to no one in particular. "Maybe we're supposed to be at lunch."

Last week, thousands of 13- , 14- , and 15-year-olds in Virginia embarked upon -- depending on their perspectives -- the first year of a four-year educational journey/social romp/prison sentence.

For the next 10 months, they will commiserate over a status that no one, not even the pretty people or preordained cool kids, can escape: being a high school freshman. At the outset, there is fear. Will they get lost in a 130,000-square-foot building? Will they find the right lunch table? Get wedged in a locker? Get hazed on Freshman Friday? Earn decent grades?

Educators fear for those who may drop out. Many view the freshman year as so critical in boosting graduation rates that elaborate "Freshman Fest" orientations are staged in the summer. At Potomac and other schools, a transition coordinator works with repeaters and other freshmen who had poor grades in middle school.

Potomac, which serves a diverse and growing middle-class neighborhood, is one of Prince William County's smallest high schools. It has about 460 ninth-graders. Those who had struggled in eighth grade were trying last week to start afresh and shake off the apathy that had resulted in so many C's. For those on the elite college track, the first week set in motion the Grand Plan. These achievers envisioned a blemish-free transcript and perhaps a crew team membership, all the better to impress a college admissions committee in three years.

And so, even as the new Potomac freshmen bonded over their collective lowly stature, they also began splitting into academic and social cliques.

On Thursday, Ashley Parker, 14, Jenny Santos, 15, and Sarah Parlette, 14, whose grades gave them entree into the college-level Cambridge program, filed into the cafeteria for lunch. They instinctively headed toward a specific table and sat on one side so they could see who was coming through the cafeteria's main door.

"My base school was Freedom," Sarah said, referring to a nearby high school in Woodbridge that has a high percentage of low-income and minority students and relatively low SAT scores. "But what I've heard is this school is good for education. Freedom's good, but they're new and they're not at this level."

Ashley agreed and said she chose Potomac for its Cambridge program. "I'm trying to go for the ACE diploma -- the highest diploma here," she said, sipping a can of Red Bull and eating a slice of pizza.

They began wondering whether they would become competitive with each other in a couple of years when they begin applying to universities, such as Yale or Harvard. "With my friends, we would get competitive. But we're probably going to stick together," Ashley said. "For other people, we'd get competitive. It's a group thing."

Jenny lowered her head. "My friends are in the lower stages, so they just support me," she said.

"A person from my old school came up to me the other day," Ashley said, "and was like, 'Hey, let me see your schedule?' They see you're in advanced courses and . . . it's a big problem."

In a different universe but within the same walls, other freshmen -- such as Anikka or Justin "Jesse" Wadsworth, 14, who got average grades in middle school -- want to succeed but do not feel the need to be so intense. Sometimes their concerns are just about survival.

"I'm scared of lockers. I don't want to get pushed in one," said Jesse, who was talking to Anikka, a friend from Rippon Middle School in Woodbridge. The two of them were standing in front of a cafeteria redolent of chicken tenders and tacos.

"I'll protect you like when I did in seventh grade," Anikka said. "If you get one of those smaller lockers, they won't be able to fit you in."

Then, a quick thought came to Anikka. Who's that guy with the funky dreads wearing the black #7 Michael Vick football jersey?

"What's your name?" she asked him, extending her hand for a shake.

"Hi. David," said David Harris, also a freshman, who shook her hand but fell silent. Anikka quickly left, and he shook his head and put it on the table.

Time for algebra I. Anikka, Jesse and Tiffany Williams headed upstairs to the class, where teacher Mary Lalli quickly got them interpreting algebraic expressions, some of it a review from eighth grade.

Toward the end of class, Tiffany got flummoxed on question No. 20 in the textbook: "Write an algebraic expression for each verbal expression: the product of 5 and m plus 1/2 of n ."

She was feeling guilty for having already summoned Lalli twice, but she really wanted the help. "I got a C in math last year. Sometimes I get lazy, and don't do what I'm supposed to do," she said. "But I'm not average, and a C is average. I'm above that."

Then she swiveled around and commanded that her friend behind her call for the teacher. "Ask her about No. 20," she said, pleadingly. " Ask her."