October 7, 2025 // Diocese

School Spirit: Getting Over the Freshman Jitters

Todays Catholic

Your Schools, Your Stories
This academic year, Today’s Catholic is partnering with the student media programs at all four Catholic high schools in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. Each week, student writers, editors, and photographers from Bishop Luers and Bishop Dwenger in Fort Wayne, Saint Joseph in South Bend, and Marian in Mishawaka will share their work on this new page, School Spirit, dedicated to telling the stories of their school communities.

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Getting Over the Freshman Jitters

By Luke Datzman

When Marian High School opened its doors in 1964, it only had 239 students and 12 teachers. Imagine the amount of anxiety those students and teachers had. They left the familiar comfort of their previous schools and careers to pursue new opportunities at a new school.

In a way, high school is like this for each student in each freshman class – new teachers, new buildings, new opportunities.

At Marian right now, there are 48 teachers and 692 students – 225 of whom are freshmen who might very well be stressed because of the huge shift from middle school to high school. The freshmen might also be scared about unknown classes and unknown teachers.

Thankfully, I knew some of the teachers and some of the norms at Marian. When I first walked into school for orientation, I was welcomed by a jolly group of four students. As my friends and I sat on the bleachers, we were also welcomed by each teacher who spoke at orientation. They included some fun in that first day as well. After each speech by a department of teachers, they would play knockout with students (knockout is a basketball elimination game where the players line up and if the person behinds you makes a shot before you do, you are eliminated).

After all the fun was over, the vice principal, Mr. Nicholas Kaczynski, said something very reassuring: “We do assign homework, but we don’t give you a whole bunch – at most, two hours per night.” This was great news for me considering I do a lot of extracurricular activities.

Getting so much information on the first day and learning more about the expectations at the school, orientation alleviated much of the nerves of beginning high school. On the second day, I met all my teachers, and each seemed wonderful and welcoming.

After the first few days of school had ended, the real work began. Homework was assigned, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was able to get it done in about an hour. I had a couple of late nights of homework after that, but they weren’t too bad. I was so nervous about homework, but the worrying just held me back.

One thing about Marian that I had been excited about for years was the lunches, and they did not disappoint. The lunches at Marian are so much better than my grade school. If I am having a long day at school, I always look forward to lunch. So far, my favorite meal has been the meatball sub and Italian salad. Everything in the Marian cafeteria is good. Every day, we have access to a salad bar. I enjoy the snack shack that has ice cream sandwiches, chips, and other sorts of sugary treats. Monday through Thursday, we have a sub bar where you can build your own submarine sandwich.

After lunch, I have Spanish, which is one of my favorite
classes. It is an immersion class, and the teacher is Señorita Maria Arias. Señorita Arias is fun and humorous. My favorite class, however, is Student Publications with Mrs. Mary Dlugosz, where we work on the school yearbook and write newspaper articles (such as this one).

I love to play basketball, although I do not know if I will make the team later this fall. Because of this, I wasn’t sure if I would play a sport in high school, but I decided to give cross country a try. My older cousin runs cross country and likes it, so I decided to join the team. Now, cross country is one of the best parts of my day. After school, I go to cross country practice. We run three-quarters of a mile for a warmup and then run for 20-50 minutes. I felt really welcomed by the older kids on the team. It was tough at the beginning because I had never done any long-distance running before. Then, after three weeks of practices and meets, it felt natural. I recently ran a meet where I got a personal record by 2 minutes. Cross country has been an influential part of not being stressed in school. On my runs, I like to reflect on my school days.

The other students and staff at Marian High School have really supported me and have made high school a fun and exciting place. I am ready to have an amazing four years at Marian.

Luke Datzman is a freshman at Marian High School.