Ah yes, High School. A place where lifetime memories are made. Yet, if you are an incoming freshman next year, it can be pretty gruesome. In fact, it's not pretty gruesome, it IS gruesome. Here are a few tips from a Junior, ME, Shvotz, who you will get to know pretty well next year. Here goes:

1. Bring lots of pencils. Mainly because teachers hate it when you forget your pencils, but also because teachers hate it when JUNIORS forget their pencils, like I will do frequently. Now, unless you accelerated Freshman wanna get a few false teeth, I reccommend you let me borrow a few.....hehe.

2. Just agree with everything. I always say that giving into conformity is wrong. Well, it isn't when you are a Frosh. In fact, if you are an underclassmen at all, your best bet to survival is to just try to be invisible until you are a Junior like me.

3. Your locker defines who you are. If you have an organized, stationary-type locker, then chances are you are gonna fit right into the Chess Club genre. Believe me, you don't want that. Take it from a pro, the less organized you are, the more popular you will be with the upperclassmen. We don't like it when a Frosh out-does us with anything, much less, something we should have learned in 8th grade!

4. Whatever you do, don't show any school spirit whatsoever. If you ever out-do an upperclassmen, you are definitely conceitin' for a beatin'. Another thing: you should learn the high school lingo fast, but that doesn't mean you can use it around us.

5. Become a rebel. Don't do what the teachers tell you to. We upperclassmen respect this, but if you do it too much, we may start to hate you. Especially the ones who crave attention and have been doing this since THEY were Freshmen.

6. If you see a Junior/Senior struggling with something that you understand, don't help us. This may sound strange, but let's go into "pretend-world" for a moment here. You're sitting in the back of the room when all of the sudden, the teacher calls on John Doe, your average Junior who hasn't been paying attention. When the teacher asks if anyone could "help" our friend Johnny, and you raise your hand and deliver the answer, who do you think Johnny is gonna get back at? Let me give you a hint: it's not gonna be the teacher because they control the grades!

7. Laugh at every upperclassmen joke you hear. In fact, get an upperclassmen to idolize, and don't necessarily copy them on everything, but maybe just their style of being. If they are ghetto, however, you made a mistake.

8. Always have a clean pair of socks handy in your locker.

9. Learn to hum the school song. If you actually learn the words, not only will we think you are creepy, but your friends might think so too. This goes back to the rule of showing as little school spirit as possible.

10. Well, if you made it hear, you are obeying this rule. And that is: Listen to everything any upperclassmen says, even if it is very time consuming and confusing. In fact, if you are confused, go back, and read everything again.