EMMA PHILBROOK: STUDENT LIFE

I bought my first locker organizer yesterday. It's a kit full of black plastic planks that you can interlock to form several configurations of shelves. After a little fiddling around this morning, I decided on an H-shaped setup - notebooks on top, textbooks on the bottom, and a shelf in the middle for pencil bags, a day planner, and whatever forms may need taking home.

I was super excited about this because my lockers for the past three years have been the stuff of urban myth. Landslides onto the head? Check. Paper pileups in which everything from homework to sunglasses can disappear for eternity? Double check. Jams so bad that the lock won't even open? I hate to admit it, but yes, I've been there. If everything went according to plan, these would all the things of the past.

And then I glimpsed at my school supply list and noticed that several of my binders this year are supposed to have two-inch spines.

Why does this matter, you may ask?

Because two-inch binders are the mortal enemies of a neat, tidy, all-atright angles locker. Simply put, it is well-nigh impossible to fit a two-inch binder in a locker perpendicular to any of its walls. It won't fit laying on its side and it won't fit against any wall no matter how you flip it. You have to wedge it in diagonally.

With any luck, though, mini-landslides won't be a problem.

It feels weird for this to be my last year of high school. Very weird. The seniors and their world of homecoming plans, ten-page papers, graduation parties, and five-minute-early dismissals seems too bizarre to now be mine. I remember the seniors my freshman year as somehow an ideal class - gentle giants who rocked on the football field and basketball court, planned an outrageously fun Homecoming, and weren't above mingling with the underclassmen. I simply can't believe that's going to be me now.

And the incoming freshmen? They're my little brother's class. I've watched them grow up, and even though they're young adults now, I can't look at them without picturing the rowdy little kids at Chris's seventh birthday party.

Part of me's scared. Another part's excited. And yet another part is nagging me about finishing my college application essay. (But then again, I'm pretty sure some lobe in my brain has decided to quit its day job and nag me about that essay full-time.)

I'm still not quite sure what I'm going to do for a senior project. I'd almost like to do it on standardized high-school achievement testing (cough, Slimy Atrocious Torture, cough), put on a prep workshop, and do a well-researched bit of muckraking on its history and inherent concept flaws. My advisor initially thought this was too boring for something I'd be forced to spend a lot of time with. But to be honest, it's more of a personal revenge thing. (Hello. My name is Emma Philbrook. You ruin my junior year. Prepare to be muckraked.)

Aw, c'mon, you've never seen The Princess Bride? How am I, a nerd, supposed to hold my head up if I don't periodically drop references to The Princess Bride?

On second thought, maybe holding my head slightly down or to the side would work better. For cranial protection. Just in case a two-inch binder didn't get the "neat, safe locker" memo this year.