It doesn’t matter what grade you are in–starting a new school year is daunting. It’s that dark cloud that looms in the background of your summer memories and comes into full vision mid-August. Every year, students face a new challenge: incoming freshmen are nervous about leaping from middle school to high school. Sophomores and juniors are taking their first AP classes and stress over completing their summer assignments. Seniors are starting to plan ahead for life after graduation.

Having completed three full years of high school, we understand. We have faced, and are still are facing, those seemingly insurmountable milestones, and we know that inevitably there comes that dreaded time. We have all experienced it. You wake up one sunny August morning and see the monstrous cloud outside your window and realize school is starting in less than a week.

Panic.

No. Do not panic.

Because you are coming to CHS. The Carlsbad High School. And although just the idea of 7:30 a.m. makes us want to crawl back into our warm and inviting beds, we really have no reason to be afraid. A new school year provides a clean slate, and as cliché as it sounds, it is filled with endless opportunity. It means we reunite with old friends who we lost touch with over summer, and make new ones along the way. It means we learn new things and discover new passions (that AP class is not as bloodthirsty as it sounds). It means we bleed purple at football games and form study groups with friends. It means we dress up for tacky tourist day and march in the Homecoming parade. It means we read the Lancer Express on the way to first period, and watch CHSTV at the end of it.

So yes, another school year is starting. Let’s make it the best one yet. Take advantage of everything our school has to offer (it’s a lot). Go watch the spring musical and the JV lacrosse game. Do it while you can, the four years truly fly by.

Welcome to Carlsbad High: home of the Lancers. You can do this.

It’s C-Bad time.