Normally when we think of our siblings we often think about how annoying they are. How they bug you and fight with you and get you in trouble.

As summer approaches I'm beginning to let out a sigh of relief. School is almost over. No homework. No tests. No waking up at 7 a.m. No afterschool sports practices. Total and complete relaxation, right?

When you enter high school your perception of the entire world changes. Well, maybe not the entire world, but what you come to value and appreciate change significantly from your middle school days.

Recently an e-mail was sent out to the student body containing a summary of a speech Bill Gates allegedly gave to a public high school in regard to how to succeed in life.

I would consider myself a fairly good student. I may not understand everything in class and I may ask quite a few questions, but when it comes time to focus, take notes, and do my homework I feel like I tend to be on top of things.

With the rise of the Internet comes a quicker way to get information, to communicate, to shop, and an easier way to access entertainment (including things such as playing online computer games and watching an assortment of homemade videos).

We've all heard about the nature vs. nurture debate. Are you the way you are because of your genes and chromosomes, or is it a result of your environment? Most of the time people respond with claiming that it is a mixture of the two, and opt out from taking a stance one way or the other. I may agree with this to some extent, but I feel like there has to be more of an influence from one side.

We've now entered the last quarter of the 2007-08 school year, and you can't help but hear all the seniors expressing their enthusiasm in nearly being done with high school.

I, on the other hand, have five more quarters to complete until the end of my high school career. Nonetheless, I'm extremely excited for what's to come.

Every day we get up and get dressed. We shower, style our hair, apply makeup, and spend a good amount of time deciding what the perfect combination of "pants, shoes, and shirts" is for that day.

We're girls. Some of us wake up half an hour before we have to leave, and some of us get up a good hour and a half before we would even have to get in the car: however long it takes to look good!

Gossiping is something that occurs within every high school. It's not something you can really stop. Uni, though, is such a small community that it feels like one small thing can travel throughout the entire school in the matter of a lunch period. Sometimes people I don't even know are talking about something I thought only pertained to me and my friends.

No matter who you are in life, there are always going to be rules. At the same time, though, not everyone abides by those rules.

Agora Days changes every year. Subbie year I was the most excited about how wonderful and funny and interesting Agora would be, but when it actually came time to sign up for classes I was blessed with a schedule consisting of courses such as Certamen I, which was a class for students taking Latin … and I was in French.

Last week I was sure that I was going to die: everywhere I went I kept seeing bad omens!

Everyone says that high school is the best time of your life. Remember those parties and those dances and those cute boys, say all the adults?

They tell me that I don't want to grow up, because I will have to go work every day and take care of myself (buying my own food and paying my own bills). But at this point in my high school career, that's not sounding too bad.

Uni is always noted as being a unique community: You get to be with relatively the same 60 people for five years. And to some extent this is good (you get to know each other better and are able to form “lasting bonds” with your classmates), but being around the same people for those five straight years also can result in a lot of tension.