Tell your favorite teacher how much they mean to you

There are certain teachers who have made a noticeable impact on our lives. Some of them do so by exposing us to new and beautiful concepts and ideas, others by taking the time to speak to us about our lives, and others by swearing profusely about supply and demand. They do it all for us and as we prepare to leave Paly it’s a good time to thank them for their help and let them know they’ve made a difference in our lives.

Wear a crazy outfit to school (make-up included)

The fashion-industrial complex: a totalitarian, authoritarian and pescatarian regime that has dictated how and why we dress the way we would do for too damn long! Now that we’ve grown enough to understand the scope of their oppression, it’s time to fight back. Screw matching colors and not wearing flannel on flannel. Wear it if you have it and then add two popped collars, a top hat and a tutu you got in the second grade. Make a statement, even if that statement is only that you have accumulated a lot of weird, cool clothes over the years and you’re definitely not bringing any of them to college so might as well give them one last hurrah before you dump them all on your younger sibling’s bed before peacing out.

Explore the trails of Foothill park for a day

Mountain tops covered in dark green forest spread out below as far as the eye can see, fading into the mist that shrouds the landscape in the distance. This view isn’t from a helicopter transporting a rugged professor to search for treasure and Nazis in a land lost in time: it is of the Santa Cruz mountains, mere minutes away from Palo Alto. Our local mountain range is a beautiful one, and Foothill park contains a beautiful slice of them, and one reserved for us. So, whether you never knew Oregon turned into Page Mill or you take long strolls through the mountains every morning, take a day sometime soon to enjoy the natural beauty that we’re lucky enough to have near us.

Visit El Palo Alto and be like, “Wow, that’s a tall tree man,” then leave

Like, really tall. Geez. I wonder how old it is. Probably pretty damn old.

Burn old homeworks, tests, and quizzes (possibly while dancing around them in loincloths in an animalistic trance to the deep, powerful beat of a bear-skin drum)

Stacks and stacks of papers, pounds and pounds of notes. The remains of years of forced labor. Don’t recycle it, it’s been tainted by your suffering, and could poison an innocent child trying to make an enviro-friendly paper airplane in a few years! Better to burn it, because they said something in APES about that generating energy and that probably applies to this, and dioxin kind of sounds like maltodextrin which is in candy so it can’t be that bad, right? Right.

Take a panini press into class and make sandwiches in the back (but only for yourself)

The tell-tale sizzle of bread toasting. Of cheese melting. Of meat, uh, being heated. The rich smell of a grilled, pressed greasy thing of beauty filling your nostrils as you remove your panini from your press. There’s nothing like it, especially when you’re in the back of your math class and everybody (including the teacher) is looking at you with envy written across their features. You don’t have to wait for lunch, you eat when you feel like it, and you feel like it now. As you bite into that panini you’ll know that you are a god among men, and also kind of annoying and an ass, but mostly a god among men. Yeah.

Take your dog/cat/platypus to school

Whenever you come home they are there, ready to greet you with a smile on their faces and a dump on your carpet that you have to clean up. Pets are our best friends, so why leave them at home all the time? Take your domesticated fauna to Paly and show them where you go all day. You can even let them meet your teachers, I’m sure they’ll love petting them and cleaning up the dump they take in the corner of the classroom. Smells like love… and kibble.

Play paintball with James Franco’s paintings

Of course we appreciate all James Franco has done for Paly. From painting murals that are personally important to him on the student center to doing that thing in the MAC, he’s made an impact on this campus like no other A-list celebrity. But we’ve all already thought about covering Paly with paint splatters, and with the addition of his huge paintings it’s turned into an irresistible cornucopia of targets. Extra points if you hit the words James or Seth!