By Margaret Lazarus, ’13, Contributor

Last year, I was elected freshman class president. I felt that I differentiated myself from the other worthy candidates because I expressly didn’t promise anything in my speech.  I felt that I was too unfamiliar with the high school to pigeonhole myself with unrealistic goals and that my time would be more effectively spent by recognizing the problems and their respective solutions once I could take stock of high school.

Immediately after being elected, however, I was excited about the new ideas for high school and the freshman class’s place within it. Together with the class vice president, Samuel Fossett, and the secretary-treasurer, Luke Hall, I sat down and wrote a list of things that we wanted to accomplish. The list consisted of things from freshman Fridays (community service-oriented days) to the common pizza sale. We had many novel ideas for our class coming into high school, and so far, we have acted on many of the things on our collective list.

After arriving in the Upper School, I realized that I really don’t do as much as I had planned for. I’d somehow thought that I would be expected to make speeches every day, but instead, my biggest responsibilities are to plan for group activities involving the entire grade like T-shirts. And although this and other similar processes take a long time to complete, Samuel, Luke and I are finally bringing it to a close.

Another unexpected responsibility of a freshman class officer is to attend the all-student council meetings that are usually during lunch on Wednesdays. As much as I enjoy the meetings and being a part of student government, I miss my lunchtime in the Dining Terrace. The positive side to the meetings is being able to be involved in the voting process for the dances and other school-wide activities. The most responsibility as a freshman officer that I have is to propose ideas for dances. And throughout the year, I have the ability to speak up at any time and share my ideas for the high school at large. I am very happy that I was elected to be class president, though I’ve come to realize that I really didn’t understand what the role entailed. I do know, however, that I’ve done my best to adapt to unexpected situations and fully represent the interests of the freshman class.

Photo courtesy of Meg Lazarus.