(June 16, 2005) — t’s 2001; the engine on the bus cranks and it starts off. One of the seniors gets up and yells out “Roll Call!” He looks down at a list and shouts the first name, “Ashley?” No one answers. He tries again with an irritated voice, “Ashley!” Slowly, Armen Khaloyan looks up and reluctantly raises his hand. As an initiation, the upperclassmen on Khaloyan’s bus enforced a roll call system on the freshmen. Guys were given female names and vice versa. But a gender reversal wasn’t the only thing awaiting Khaloyan. He remembers being “amazed at what you had here, the amount of resources.” Joseph Won had a similarly positive first experience. Won remembers how clean everything was compared to middle school. Some had first experiences far less ideal. Gayane Ter-Oganesyan’s first day at Clark left her as a freshman celebrity, but for reasons she hadn’t intended. “I was going and slipped and fell down.” She slid down the stairs at the orientation assembly and from then on was known as “the girl who fell.” Freshman year wasn’t all clean bathrooms and computers, though; students had to face the rigors and special challenges associated with high school. “I remember the first day my bus was late,” said Won, “you could tell it was going to be a long year.” The enthusiasm from teachers helped. “They were hyped up for the new batch,” said Won. But even the zeal from the beginning of the year managed to fade. “Mr. Rogers fell asleep during a video on weather, he just dozed off in geoscience,” said Ter-Oganesyan. “A guy threw a piece of paper at him and he woke up and just started watching the movie like nothing happened.” Alan Mera remembers coming to school and discovering that there were “probably two Mexicans,” he said. “I felt out of place, but I adapted to new friends.” Friends played a huge part of freshman year as students were making new ones and trying to stay in touch with old friends. “My friends and I would flip backpacks,” said Gayane Ter-Oganesyan. “We did it to all our friends and hid them on the second floor.”