High school in a nutshell?

November 15, 2019

The 2018 Clap-In, like most others, featured a variety of reactions from the incoming class.

The 2018 Clap-In, like most others, featured a variety of reactions from the incoming class.

The embedding of this event into the LFHS student experience stretches even farther, four years after this event takes place in a Scout’s life. The Senior Clap-Out takes place each year during the beginning of the school walk that was established within the same emotional wellness initiative.

“It is a great way for [freshmen] to be welcomed and included, but it also allows for your years at LFHS to come full circle,” said Schwartz. “If you attend LFHS for four years, your high school life can be bookended with a clap-in and a clap-out.”

Considering the ways in which the clap-in has found a place in the LFHS experience over the years, the current freshmen who most recently experienced it most clearly define its identity.

“It was a nice gesture, I felt welcomed, it was just very long and scary and I didn’t know what to do. I was just a little overwhelmed,” said freshman Mary Grace King. “I think it should stay though. We went through it, so the next freshman should have to go through it.”

Some freshmen also believed that the awkwardness stretched into the whole orientation, but it was all justifiable. “I think it is kind of awkward, but I feel like that’s kind of a part of it. During Freshman Orientation I do feel like they try to make things a little awkward, and I think the clap-in is just a part of it,” freshman Connell Sassen said.

The proposition that the awkwardness is a welcome part of the tradition’s identity — rather than a negative setback — certainly shines through. Upon asking about this debate, one of the most significant coordinators of the event itself was fully unafraid to highlight this clarified identity.

“Isn’t it kind of high school in a nutshell?” Link Crew coordinator Rebecca Schwartz asked rhetorically. “Some people are going to view it as super awesome, some people are going to view it as cringe-worthy and embarrassing – but it is one of those things that everybody goes through together, and it unites you as a class in the end. When you think of it that way, that moment really summarizes what high school ends up being.”

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