It’s Saxon Time and you have three tests today. You’ve spent all last night crying and have four tissue boxes in the trashcan. You need this time, this glorious time after first period, but you have forgotten something very important, your M&M meeting, and to you, this is mandatory.

M&M meetings were part of a new way to help freshmen enter the high school community and become comfortable in the environment faster. These meetings would occur about once a month during Saxon time. Seniors (and some juniors) would be paired up with groups of three to four freshmen to talk about ways to make a better transition into high school, and the ever more popular extra time at the end of the meeting where you awkwardly talk about your “important” academic endeavors and the lack of a social life you have as homework starts to pile.

The first meeting is normally the best; you meet your mentor, praying to God that he or she can relate to you instead of turning on their iPhone and going through Twitter feeds. You also get to meet the members in your group which make it even more awkward as they so hopefully try to look normal when a sense of “why am I even here, I need to study, is it bad if I just walk out right now?, I think this is a joke.” pass over their faces. Lucky for me, I had a great mentor; she was on the dance team, was really friendly, and actually seemed to care about how high school was going. Trust me, it’s surprising when that happens especially when some mentors last year skipped their own meetings. The other people in my group were as quiet as I was. The sounds of eerie crickets chirp in the background as she tells us about herself and how high school is/was for her. Maybe we cared, but we all wanted to go cry about school. The meeting ends and we slowly funnel out, our faces full of boredom and hopelessness, as you know you’re going to fail the test next period.

Meetings after that become very dry. There becomes less and less to actually talk about and it becomes really awkward, super awkward. You become less involved and hate the days when the announcements blare out and say, “freshman, please report to your mentors for Saxon Time”, it becomes a hassle when you could be talking with friends or cramming for that test you’ve spent all last night crying about.

M & M meetings really don’t work. You might be anxious to meet an upperclassman and gain that extra friend on Facebook, but they turn out to be awkward and a waste of time that could be spent doing way better things. I like the idea behind the program but it just isn’t implemented in the right way to really make a difference for freshmen. To all freshmen: don’t make these meetings more awkward then they really are, talk about your life (even though it might be boring, mine is), and try to connect with your mentor and group members. Maybe you can make it less painful than it was for me last year.