Elizabeth Kilbride
Opinions Editor
Some of the the following items are going to be quite literal, and you can feel free to take it as advice; some of them are going to be kind of silly, and of course a lot of it I don’t really wish I knew, because I had a pretty good time learning.
So first things first, the reason your calculator’s battery hasn’t died since eighth grade is because it was saving its death for a really big moment, like the math section of the ACT. Being that kid with extra batteries sometimes isn’t overkill. That said, I still didn’t rock the math section, so here’s the first thing I should have realized: Unless you’re a “math person” (ew, but whatever), reviewing for the math on standardized tests is encouraged. It’s deceptively hard because you haven’t seen anything like it since your TI-83 was new and won’t see anything like it until, uh, ever.
Standardized testing naturally leads me into the college process, so here’s what I’ll say about college visiting: There is a time and place to belt out Scar Tissue. In the car with your mom, after she’s driven you halfway home from all the colleges in Pennsylvania, isn’t it. Another thing, you don’t really need to see all the colleges in Pennsylvania. You can take that advice, or figure it out as I did, after passing your one hundredth silo.
But maybe none of this applies to you yet. If you’re going to be taking bio next year, I’ll tell you that I wish I knew chewing gum makes it a lot easier to cut open a pig’s heart. The metallic scent is a lot less overwhelming that way and you regain at least 40% of your ability to breathe through your nose.
If you’re going to be taking a history course that requires you to do “current events,” don’t pick an obscure country that you think it’d be cool to learn about. Because, as you will realize every freakin’ month, the reason the country’s obscure is because (according to Reuters, The New York Times, WSJ online, and occasionally the Christian Science Monitor) nothing ever happens there. Except like, there are a few tennis hopefuls for whatever Open is coming up. Unfortunately, that just isn’t going to get you an A when the kid next to you is reporting on the effects of the economic crisis on something just slightly more relevant to the course.
To head a slightly different direction, when math starts to look like English, just stop. I advise you to take another route. There should not be more words and letters than numbers. And double check your work. The number of points I’ve lost on account of poor addition is probably greater than twice the sum of my GPA and another, much larger number.
One more thing I wish I’d known is that while yes, frees are brilliant, one isn’t quite long enough to finish your math, science, French, and history work in. The effort can be valiant, but the ultimate lesson is that some homework must be done at home, or simply not done.
At the end of it, here’s the best I can give you: Don’t sweat the little stuff (read: Moodle, essay deadlines your senior year, and those awkward lunches you have no friends in). Here’s the stuff you will actually wind up sweating during: Homecoming, at least during the glorious twenty minutes you spend at the dance, gym, when you’re doing archery and it’s five billions degrees out, and the explanation you’re going to have to give your parents when they check the PowerSchool Portal and that one teacher had to write something like “Missing work” or “Grade in the [insert number just below Mom’s comfort level here]range.” Progress reports invariably get put up once you’ve bombed the only test given that quarter so far. Life is rough.
Seriously though, remember the thing about the chewing gum.
