Bulldogs to Bobcats

I walked into Oyster River on the first day of freshmen year and read the sign above my head, “It’s a great day to be a Bobcat.” Is that what I was now?

The past eight years of my life spent as a student in Barringtoon, my peers and I were always Bulldogs. Now as I looked around, I saw neither the farmiliar mascot nor the kids from my childhood.

Because Barrington does not have a high school, eighth grade wasn’t just about graduating middle school, it was about graduating from Barrington itself.

When given the option to choose where I would attend high school, it was a three-way pick between Coe Brown, Dover and of course, Oyster River. My sister was going to be a senior, and I knew a handful of people in the grades above that chose here as well. For me, the choice was clear, but the selection of my closest friends did not align with mine.

Meaning, the first day of freshmen year was like trying to fit into a puzzle that was already complete. My new peers that had gone to the Oyster River middle school had already developed their cliques in the years prior.  For them, there was no worry about if they would have anyone to sit with at lunch or getting lost on the way to math class.

In those first few weeks of high school, fitting in felt unachievable. Luckily now, I’m able to look back with so many great friends from Durham. I wish I could tell my fresh[1]men self that it would all work out. Unfortunately, I can’t do this, and this experience is still being lived today.

 “We’re in kind of an awkward stage,” explained a Barrington freshman, Claire Dimke, “We don’t know each other, we want to get to know each other, and just taking those firsts steps are hard.”

Usually, the freshmen are integrated with each other quickly through advisories, their classes and occasionally clubs and teams. Although they might warm up to one another, breaking that initial middle school seal can be difficult.

 “All the Oyster River kids had grown up together, and then we were just kind of the odd ones out,” Dimke said.

I remember in the beginning constantly feeling like I was interrupting a preexisting ecosystem of kids. Then later, when I eventually did make friends with kids from other towns, it was hard to balance both groups. During that time, my home connections in Barrington and budding friendships in Durham made it impossible to truly feel like I fit in with kids from anywhere.

A fear of abandoning the friendships made during middle school was also a contributing factor to the awkwardness in the transition to high school. Trying to maintain previous relationships while making efforts to build new ones was exhausting and added more stress to the large pile early high school already brought.

Starting high school was one thing, starting it alone was another.

Even though as freshmen we were all in the same boat going into a new place, there was a natural gravitation towards the people you knew before. I found myself clinging to kids I had never spoken to in middle school simply because they were the slightest bit familiar.

“Towards the beginning I definitely stuck with people from Barrington just because I wasn’t comfortable with anyone else,” said Dimke.

Of course, these cliques weren’t intentional. The kids from the other towns were just trying to survive the same way we were. It just made breaking into Oyster River life a little harder.

 “We didn’t know what to expect with the Barrington kids,” said Durham junior Livia Fox, “I wasn’t against them coming here, but I didn’t want things to change too much.”

This fear of change was a common theme in students that had attended ORMS. Others associated a stigma around the new class of kids from another town.

 “I honestly thought they were all going to be weird,” confessed Sid Sanjay, a junior from Lee, “I had heard stories, and people said that they were rowdy and mean.”

The assumptions weren’t just made by ORMS kids. Both sides of the inte[1]gration had theorized about the mystery future classmates from other schools.

“I was scared of the new people,” said Barrington junior Peyton Brown, “every[1]one said that they were going to be mean towards us.”

 The speculation didn’t make the process of combining any easier. Even if none of the stories were true, they were definitely still kept in mind. After a little while though, people began to understand that most of what they had heard was more often myth than truth.

 “When I got to know them better, I realized they were just normal kids like us,” said Sanjay.

Without realizing it the awkward stage of introductions and early friendship did pass. Life at Oyster River became primary, and the past years at other schools became fond memories.

 For me, getting involved with school activities was the best strategy to branching out. Inserting myself into clubs and teams made me friends in so many different places. It was scary at first, but the relationships made were well worth it.

 “After freshmen year ended I really got into the groove of things,” said senior

Gracy Spirito, “I knew all the people, I knew the places around Durham, and I knew what was going on.”

Pretty quickly the idea of “Barrington kids” and “Oyster River kids” gets old. Astime goes on, where you’re from becomes less of a stigma and more of a thing people forget about until it gets brought up.

Today my closest friends are from a wide range of towns, and I’ve started to forget who I actually attended middle school with. What seemed like the end of the world a couple years ago is now something my friends and I look back on and laugh at.

As I go into junior year, I genuinely can’t imagine my life any differently, and to the freshmen struggling right now I promise it will get better. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that the B-Town jokes will ever stop (my best advice for that is just to embrace it).

However, I can confidently assure you that the sense of solitude does. The isolation doesn’t stick around, but the right people will.

-Elsa Svenson