Prom. It's just a tiny little word that has come to mean so much. Just looking at it without knowing what it is you might brush it off as you do so many other everyday words. However, in my junior year I have come to learn that to some people prom means everything.

As you get older, there are many ages of your life that are considered milestones.

• 13: Your first year as a teenager
• 16: It is finally possible for you to get your license and cruise around without your parents!
• 17: No curfew, so stay out as late as you want
• 18: Legal adulthood!

On Saturday, April 5, I attended the Perfect Prom Project's Boutique Day at the Illini Union.

On Friday night, I went to see Uni’s spring play, "Much Ado About Nothing." First of all, for those of you who didn’t see it, you really missed out. It was amazing in all of its Shakespearean glory and the actors were great and so on.

Reality shows are pretty much the most-watched shows today. It is one of the few ways that we can see “normal” people doing outrageous things and make fun of or support them without any fear of backlash. It is drama that you see played out every week, try to predict, and can supposedly at least partially control.

“The governor of New York has been linked to a prostitution ring.” Something about that phrase just seems not right. Maybe it’s the words “governor” and “prostitution” in the same sentence.

Either way, when I heard that phrase, my first reaction was to laugh. Oh yes, another sleazy politician caught red-handed just like they always are. They deserved it.

Boots with the fur. The expression has become practically immortalized since Flo Rida sang about them in his hit song “Low.” Now everywhere I go, there they are like a fuzzy disease.

One of Uni's oh-so-many, adorably unique qualities is that high school students (subbies too) get to run around a college campus. We have off-campus lunch, and we can go anywhere during our free periods. So most Uni students have a good grasp of the general features of campus by the time we start our own college careers.

The movie “Mean Girls” was a huge hit. Thousands of people lined up and saw it in theaters or bought the DVD, loving the hilarious plot line of a group of catty high school girls inflicting unspeakable damage on themselves and others.

As I was working on a class project, I faithfully opened Wikipedia to get a better idea of what I would be talking about. As I skimmed the article there was a link to another site. My curiosity and boredom got the better of me and I clicked on it. It led me to Wikihow.

"Wait, you wear contacts?"

That's a question I have heard quite a few times since I first got them in fifth grade. Not many people know that I technically wear glasses, because I wear contacts to school every day.

History is not really my best subject (this is not because of the teachers, because I know that here at Uni the history teachers are the BEST). It's hard to pay attention when I can't see how what we're learning can apply to the modern world. I realize that is the whole point of history classes, but all the names, dates, and rebellions seem to go over my head.

The old competition of who has a cell phone has been replaced by who has “the best” phone.

Everyone owning a cell phone has become the norm. If you walk up to a random person and ask to borrow their cell phone, chances are good that they have one. “Hey, what’s up?” is probably the most common phrase in my vocabulary, as well as my standard greeting when answering my phone.

It is a typical school night.

I love you. All the TV shows and the sappy stories use those three words so much that most people have become numb to them. Good friends (not to stereotype, but mostly girls) say it all the time. I often hear, and say, "Just kidding, you know I love you." But what about when it comes to one of the most unpredictable things in the world, a high school relationship?