By Jihu Choi ‘25 and Karry Kim ‘25
Dear readers,
How was your experience entering St. Mark’s in your first year? What was orientation like? What was most memorable to you? All the eyes of the animal heads glaring into you while you eat in the dining hall? Pointing at a random peer and shouting “Whaa” in a circle? Perhaps getting yelled at by going on the senior quad?
We can all agree that students have a diverse range of experiences when it comes to their first few memories of adjusting at SM. Overall, the SM community is filled with a group of perhaps the most welcoming and amazing group of faculty and students, and bright smiles fill up the hallways (at least in the beginning of the year). But would it make a difference if you were to come in as a new sophomore? Practically, everyone in your grade has spent nearly a year already with their classmates and found friends who they made memories with. And now you feel the pressure to catch up on that one year worth of work. Doesn’t that sound daunting?
We have collected an anonymous survey containing four questions to the new sophomores at St. Mark’s:
Do you feel that you are familiar with everyone in the grade?
Did you find the new student orientation helpful for assimilating into the grade?
Were there any struggles in particular that you felt during your first month at St. Mark's?
Are there any suggestions to what the school could do better for new sophomores in the future?
Surprisingly, 75% of the participants replied no to question 2, suggesting that many new sophomores found the orientation not helpful for assimilating into the grade in any way. To the 75% of participants that replied that orientation was not helpful, we asked why. A recurring theme in their responses was that although new student orientation provided useful insight to the school, they felt that they weren’t in the right crowd of people for activities intended to help class bonding. Many expressed that they enjoyed meeting the new freshmen, yet it was difficult to make new friends at all, since there was an inherent division between the majority of the new students, freshmen, and the new sophomores. The absence of returning sophomores in their orientation activities also eliminated chances for new students and returning sophomores to engage in full conversations with each other. This created some struggles for them to adjust to St. Mark’s. For instance, one student explained that they felt that “[they] started from square one after student orientation”, since they weren’t seeing friends they have made during orientation once school actually started.
For question 3, many students expressed their struggles with understanding and learning the norms of St. Mark’s. For instance, a large number of students expressed difficulty from their unfamiliarity to using Canvas to keep track of their course. It was especially difficult because their teachers had expected them to know, unlike their expectations for new freshmen. Relating to the problems they had encountered during orientation, a recurring struggle was also integrating into a friend group. In contrast to freshman year, where students are provided with a lot of free time and dedicated times for students to socialize, the increased workload of sophomore year and the strain of adjusting to a new academic environment did not leave any leeway for new sophomores to socialize with peers.
Overall, the participants of the survey felt that the integration of new sophomores were largely overlooked by the school, socially and academically, as they were expected to navigate their own way in St. Mark’s. As a better way to integrate new sophomores into the grade, participants suggested a shorter orientation week with the new freshmen, and more class bonding activities as a grade.
However, although the school could have done more for the new sophomores, many participants acknowledged that these issues were natural for entering a new school, especially to such a small school like St. Mark’s. All participants expressed that with time, they were able to successfully adjust to their new environment, shown by the responses from question 1. To the question, “Do you feel that you are familiar with everyone in the grade?” 50 percent of participants answered that they are familiar with all the names of peers in their grade and have talked to most of them, while 50 percent answered that they are not familiar with everyone’s names yet but they feel welcomed at St. Mark’s.
As an intentionally small, closely knit community, there is a need for St. Mark’s to establish better programs to help integrate new sophomores into the grade. Nevertheless, St. Mark’s welcomes all the new sophomores and juniors joining our community!