Wake up! (Who cares if you went to bed three hours ago? SUCK IT UP.) Brush your teeth for exactly 2.5 minutes. Eat a balanced, nutritious breakfast, just like Cocoa Puffs commercials instruct you to. Once on the bus, buckle your seatbelt! (There ARE no seatbelts? Compose a letter to the board!)

When you get to school – get to class on time! (You had to go to your locker? Whose fault is that?) Sit up straight! Take detailed notes, all the while looking as if you could care less – pass notes, roll your eyes, make your friends aware that you are hating this just as much as they. (You actually like math? Blasphemy!)

Next class halfway across the school? RUN! (Maybe if you had signed up for AP Stat instead of art, you wouldn’t be in this pickle.) Toe the line of acceptable individuality! (Feel like painting dark and depressed to mirror your insides? OKAY, FREAK.)

Sprint to physics, so you don’t miss a single solitary second of the lesson that you are never, ever going to use in your daily life once the semester ends – you swear. (As if that matters! Take notes! Absorb the mirror equation until you can recite it in Chinese!)

Scamper to history! Take the test you spent three hours studying for! (Obviously, George Washington’s birthday is far more important that meals or personal hygiene.) Don’t forget to PASS! No, don’t merely pass – DEFEAT the test! FORCE the thing into submission! EXECUTE Chinese water torture until the test waves its LITTLE WHITE FLAG!

Hurry to lunch! Never forget that a healthy body leads to a healthy soul leads to a healthy GPA! Forage for a healthy meal amongst the 500-calorie cookies and ice cream bars! Shove down a salad – they’ve been out of salads since forth period? Compose a letter to the board!

Be social – but only with the friends you’ve already made! (You’re exhausted and have three chapters to read? WILL THAT TEXTBOOK MAKE AWKWARD SMALL TALK WITH YOU AT THE REUNION?)

Dash to le français! Why aren’t you fluent yet? It’s been four years! Pick it up! And enough with that filthy American accent – where on Earth did that come from?

Play a sport! Layout the yearbook! Construct the set for the fall play! You’re exhausted? SUCK IT UP. (Colleges don’t accept naptime as an extracurricular activity!)

Speaking of colleges, LOOK THEM UP. Make a list! Sign up for tours! Take the PSATS! You’re not graduating for two years and you have absolutely no idea what you want to do with your life? WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? (Maybe if you hadn’t quit ballet and karate and gymnastics and soccer, you’d be a prodigy at Harvard by now.) Grades aren’t stellar enough for Harvard? Fine, Brown will have to do.

Time to take notes on forty pages of dead white men and thirty problems on composite functions and stare at yourself in the mirror until you know exactly how to calculate the location of your image. (It’s simply in the mirror? NOT GOOD ENOUGH.)
You feel like reading a book, drawing a picture, writing a poem? SUCK IT UP. Now is not the time for aimless thought! Creativity is not what matters! YOU MUST BE EXCELLENT. Perfection is key.