Hello noise, my old friend.

Now that winter break is over, I have resumed back to my daily life of clamor: chatter in the school hallways, music playing constantly in my room, rings and pings from the phone and computer, et cetera, et cetera.

As underclassman, my peers and I have often heard horror stories about upcoming junior and senior years. With multiple AP and honors classes, standardized testing, college applications and the ever time consuming extra-curricular activities, sleep is pushed to the bottom of the list of priorities for many juniors and seniors.

Two anti-bullying assemblies in a six-month period, people being singled out at rallies with offensive jokes and a disqualification from Homecoming because of inappropriate and offensive humor. Welcome to the new and not-so-improved SHS.

Having a cold is quite an adventure.

Some of the greatest acts of recycling can be found in the business of movie making. For a fraction of the work, producers can manipulate an old storyline into many sequels, or even more easily, reintroduce a classic movie to theaters in 3D. I have often ignored horrible sequels, comforting myself with the thought that the good originals still existed, but, alas, when one of my favorite movies had been tampered with, I could no longer avert my eyes.

This past summer, I studied at Stanford for three weeks. I took a psychology class and lived on-campus in a beautiful house with 26 other students and four counselors. It was something that, a few years ago, when I was crippled by shyness and a general social awkwardness, I would never have been able to do. But this was something new and exciting for me.

“Track is boring. Track is just people running. Track takes no skill.” These are the ideas that people often express to me about my favorite sport. And they couldn’t be more wrong.

In the days before technology, people amused themselves with writing. They read books, wrote letters, played games and took walks—all of which now sound completely alien to me as I vegetate in front of my computer screen, waiting for my next show to download online.

As we conclude another successful, action-packed school year, we all have little wish lists for the summer or for the upcoming school year (or may be it’s just me). Having lived at Saratoga High for 16 unusual years, my mother has been living—I mean working here —since the end of the Ford administration. I have come to think of it as something of my own private mansion.

It is 4 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. I am in bed and under the covers in my fish-decorated pajamas, but for some reason, I am not asleep. Instead, I lie in the serene darkness with every desire to be asleep, but unfortunately, this attempt appears to be useless, as usual. Most juniors would have fallen asleep from exhaustion by now, but this is a typical night for me because I have always had a sleeping problem.