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For a handful of Berkeley High School freshmen, the first day of school was the worst of all worlds. These were the students who, for one reason or another, had no class schedule in hand and, therefore, had no idea where they were supposed to be. There’s nothing that makes a freshman stand out so much as being lost. 

8:00 a.m. Crowds of students hang in small knots in the area between the Science Building and the theater, mingling, laughing, hollering, waiting for the first bell of the new school year. Schedules in hand, they already know what they’ll be doing and where they’ll be going. For the upperclassmembers, all of this is old stuff. For the freshmen who went through last week’s orientation, they try hard to appear as if all of this is old stuff to them.  

For freshmen, with no schedules, it’s another story. 

Some fifty of them stand in a line that snakes up the stairs to the doors of the theater. They give out their names to the two women sitting behind card tables. For the lucky students, their schedules are printed out and waiting for them at the tables. For the unlucky, it’s a trip to room H105. 

“Where’s H105?” one of the students asks. 

“It’s in the ‘H’ Building,” an upperclassmember answers, pointing. 

“Where’s the ‘H’ Building?” 

“It’s the one with the ‘H’ on it.” 

“Oh.” 

8:15 a.m. About 20 students sit around the various tables in H105, the College Services Office. Counselors shuttle in and out of a smaller office off the main room, conferring, comparing things on papers. To all inquiries they answer, “Don’t worry. You’ll be all right. Just sit down and hang out for a while. We’ll get to you.” 

The students sit, wait, stare at their backpacks on the desk or roll their palms over pens or pencils. Two or three jot down notes on the first page of newly-bought yellow pads, pads that are empty now, but will soon be filled with notes and homework assignments. A few of the students chat among themselves, but most sit separately, and seem pensive and worried. They’ve spent the summer, probably, preparing for the first day at the big school. It’s like a paratrooper recruit waiting to make the first jump out of an airplane, then being told to wait while the plane circles the jump area one more time. The wait must be agonizing. Let’s just do it. 

A few upperclassmembers wander in to look for a counselor, or else, maybe, just to show off to the new kids that they, at least, know the teachers and counselors and where they’re supposed to be. Hal Thomas, the stocky, bearded Director of On-Campus Suspension, screens them at the door. He seems to have a working relationship with all of the old-timers. 

“Where are you supposed to be first period?” 

“English.” 

“Who’ve you got for English?” 

The student shrugs. 

Thomas gives an amiable smile as he edges the student back out the door. “Better whip out that schedule, then, and check it out, man.” Helping out with freshman registration “just for the day,” his strategy appears to be familiarity and gentle (but pointed) persuasion mixed with a wry humor. He apparently has a reputation among the students, as no upperclassmembers offer him a challenge, and most joke back with him as they pass on information and move on their way. 

He moves on to another student before the first one is out of the doorway. “What’s up?” he says. “Talk to me.” The student talks, explaining his problem, and Thomas gives a quick solution. In between students, he coordinates his efforts with an unseen fellow worker on a walkie-talkie. 

Freshman Counselor Susan Werd, with flowing white hair and sandals, walks in and asks, generally, how many of the students have ever had schedules. Some of the students keep talking, paying her no attention. Werd, who seems generally good-natured, is not amused. 

“When an adult talks,” she says, “you need to be quiet and listen.” 

She doesn’t say it loud, and she doesn’t say it angrily. But something in her voice–honed by years of practice, one supposes–makes the students suddenly be quiet and listen. 

She apologizes to those students who were promised schedules, but hadn’t yet gotten them. “I was here til 9:30 last night,” she says, more than once. “I tried to get them all done, but I just had to go home. We’ll have them for you as soon as we can.” Then she asks, “How many students here originally got their schedules and then lost them?” 

A few raise their hands. 

Werd narrows her eyes. “There’s a penalty for that,” she says. “20 lashes, and you have to pick up all the garbage cans today.” The students exchange nervous glances. None of them are quite sure if she’s kidding. 

While they wait, Thomas takes a seat next to a tall student whose been grumbling the most, trying to ascertain his situation.  

“I went to the theater like they told me, and they didn’t have my schedule, so they sent me here,” the student tells him, more than a little annoyed. “It’s a whole ‘nother waiting process. I ain’t about to do that.” 

Disgusted, he waits until Thomas leaves, and then gets up and exits the room himself, telling noone in particular that he’s going to the bathroom. He doesn’t come back. Another student later reports that he was seen hanging out on Shattuck Avenue. Apparently, he is the only student lost to the process during the entire morning. 

8:30 a.m. The bell on the walk clock rasps out like a car alarm. The students all jump, and some of them giggle nervously. It’s the first time, apparently, they’ve heard the bell at Berkeley High School. 

More students come in the door, taking up all of the available seats around the tables, swelling the numbers to between 35 and 40. Some of them are seniors with no first period class. Tomorrow, they won’t come to school until second period, but today they’ve got to have somewhere to go (the policy of the newly-hired principal, Jim Slemp, is that students must be either in class, on a supervised assignment, or off campus altogether; the operative phrase, apparently, is “no hanging out”). Thomas sends a few of the seniors back out to various locations, cautioning them to not “draw attention to yourself.” The halls, apparently, are swarming with monitors shooing students into classrooms or offices.  

“Why don’t you cruise up to Ms. Cook’s class and see if you’re on her roll, just for ha-ha’s,” he tells one upperclassmember who, at least, has a schedule in hand. “If not, come back here.” To the students who are staying, he tells them to “have a seat, relax, get a book, make yourself at home.” 

They find it difficult to relax. After Thomas walks away leaves, an unsure student leans over to a stray adult sitting at the table next to her and asks, “Do you think they’ll mind if I take one of these books off the shelf and look at it? I’ll put it right back,” she adds, quickly. The adult tells her he doesn’t think that’ll be a problem. 

8:50 a.m. A counselor comes in and asks for any 10th graders who are present. The freshmen look up hopefully, but nobody asks for them. A few put their heads down on the desk, like third graders taking a morning nap. The 10th graders are led out in a group, to some unidentified location. For all the freshmen know, they might be merely going to sit and wait in another office. 

But like moving from the reception area to the examination room at the doctor’s office, only to wait for another half an hour, any movement must seem a step in the right direction, a sign of progress. 

8:55 a.m. Counselors begin pulling out the ninth graders two at a time. On his way out, one of the counselors tells the students, “We’re working on your schedules, and we’ll have all of you in class in a couple of hours.” The remaining students are not quite sure if this is actually true, or if this is merely pacification (it ends up being true). At the side of the room, a senior waiting out first period says drily to another senior, “They do the same thing every year.” Pacify? Make students wait? Mess of schedules? 

Whatever the reference, the other senior nods and seems to know exactly what is meant. 

9:00 a.m. The clock bell rings. The students jump again. 

9:03 a.m. Without explanation, five students who have been sitting together at a central table suddenly stand up and file out the door, smirking at the ones left behind. Those left behind stare after them, sad-faced. 

Thomas comes in again, asking if there are any 10th or 11th graders left. One student gets up, and she’s directed outside. “No more 10th or 11th graders?” Thomas asks again. A student in the back raises his hand. “I’m a sophomore,” he says. It’s hard to read the expression on Thomas’ face. 

Amusement? Resignation? Understanding that no matter how many times you ask a question of students, you’ve always got to ask just one more time? He motions with his hand for the sophomore to follow him outside. 

9:15 a.m. Werd returns and asks if there are any students present who went to King, Willard, or Longfellow Middle Schools. 

One of the seniors raises her hand. “I went to Longfellow,” she says, then adds “Four years ago.” 

Werd looks over, recognizes the senior, and appreciates the joke. “Thank you,” she says, calling the senior’s name. It is a clear lesson to the audience of freshmen. This is not a big, impersonal factory. Among the close to 3,000 students roaming the hallways, there are adults who will take the time to learn your name and know who you are. 

9:20 a.m. Werd comes back in, and is met by a student who left the room earlier and now has returned to use the telephone. He says he’s been told—by someone in authority—that he must go home and return tomorrow at 2 p.m. All he needs is for one of the counselors to inform his parents.  

Werd asks a few questions, and determines that the student was originally issued a schedule, but misplaced it. “The 2 o’clock meeting tomorrow is for students who have never registered at Berkeley High,” she tells him. “You don’t need to go home. Just go and sit down, and we’ll get to you.” 

“But I want to go home,” the student insists, edging towards the door, and freedom. 

He interrupts Werd as she tries to explain the situation to him again, and she stops him. “Don’t roll your eyes at me,” she says. She doesn’t say it angrily, or disrespectfully. Just firm and even, like you’d want school personnel to treat your child. She patiently stares him down, until he stops fidgeting. When he insists, one last time, that he was told to go home by someone in charge, Werd tells him that she’s in charge, and she’s telling him not to go home. “But if you keep giving me attitude,” she suggests, “yes, you can go home, and you won’t have to come back for the rest of the year.” 

Getting the message, finally, the student makes his way back to his seat, a little more meekly than a few minutes before. 

9:30 a.m. The bell barks out again, calling out the change of class.  

The seniors gather their books and file out, on their way to second period. 

None of the handful of remaining freshmen have jumped this time at the sound of the bell. An hour and a half has passed, and on their first day at Berkeley High, they’ve arrived.