My Monday morning alarm buzzes like the sound of the 4 a.m. train I heard just 4 hours previously. It’s 7:37 a.m., and I throw myself out of bed. I begin to prepare for my first and most dreaded class, AP Physics. I have nothing against physics; I’ve just always been more of a biology and chemistry type of guy, if you know what I mean.

After willing myself to get dressed and get out of the room at approximately 7:54 a.m., I pop in my Airpods and blast Rap Caviar to wake myself up as I leisurely stroll to Hooper, as if I have the time to walk at this lethargic pace. Normally I’m the last person to enter the classroom, and Mr. Green is already writing some equation about torque or inertia or velocity or something else I don’t care about on the board.

But it’s okay because I’m greeted by my tablemates/lab partners/ some of the best friends I’ve made at this school for the two years I’ve walked the halls of MSMS.

My day in AP Physics goes one of two ways: I either zone out halfway through the lecture and rear myself out of sleep, or I stay awake just so I can make sly comments with my best friend and future roommate for the next four years, Timothy. Most people call him Tim or the occasional “Timmy,” but I never really caught on to that and just call him Timothy. This morning he and Jessikah yell at me like every other morning to turn my music down because they can hear it from my Airpods (I think they’re just hearing things, or I may just be deaf by now).

Once, what seems like the longest hour of my life finally comes to an end, I jump for joy out of my chair and am en route to Hogarth Cafeteria for the only thing that wills me through first period, one of Ms. Beverly’s famous omelets.

I have second period off on MWF, so I use this time to fuel up for the day. During breakfast, I catch up with friends or scroll through Twitter to see what my seniors are complaining about in college. I scarf down my omelet and head to the student lounge where assignments from the night before await completion. This morning I had University Western Civilization homework to complete and articles to edit for the News section of the Vision.

The student lounge is meant to be a place for MSMS students to be productive and finish homework assignments or study for an upcoming quiz or something like that, but usually it is just a network of overstressed teens complaining about their college apps or telling stories of their eventful weekends. In the student lounge the conversations range from communist propaganda to planning of the next “Green Pants Day,” a newly founded MSMS tradition.

My next class is third period, Biochemistry, taught by none other than Dr. Odom, or as everyone calls him, Dr. O. You’ll learn quick that most of the teachers at MSMS have abbreviations (Dr. O, Mrs. Z, Mrs K., Yarby and if you dare, D-MO, short for Dr. Morgan).

Today in Biochemistry we are finishing up presentations on protein biochemistry, where we analyzed one of the greatest scientists of our modern era’s published work. This great scientist is none other than Dr. O himself. Thankfully, my group went last Friday, so I can relax and learn about amido black and gel-electrophoresis from some other group. Just to let you know how cool Dr. O is, last Friday there was a bake sale sponsored by the National History Day club, so he bought the whole class donuts. Wow! I love that man.

Third period ends and I’m back in the student lounge for fourth period. This is the only other off period I have for the day, so most of the time I try to enjoy it with the company of other sleep-deprived MSMS students. But then I remember, STATS! I have Stats homework due next period. While cranking out Statistics problems about means, boxplots, bias and a greater plethora of Stats terms, my final off period of the day flies by and it is time for fifth period.

Fifth period means AP Statistics I and the angel that is Mrs. Zarandona, or as we all call her, Mrs. Z. Today in class we learned about standard deviation, prevalence and Mrs. Z’s favorite thing– Z score.

After Stats, I trek over to Shackelford for my first humanities class of the day taught by one of my favorite teachers at MSMS, Ms. Heintz. Last year I took her for University U.S. History (I highly recommend), and this year I have her for University Western Civilization, or as most of us call it Civ. Currently, we are learning about World War I, which encompasses everything from the sinking of the Lusitania to comments about the cute little tanks that were first introduced during the “War to end all Wars” (hahaha how well did that work?).

After Civ., it’s 7th period, which means my favorite class of the day– Intro to Epidemiology, or Epi for short. This has been one of my favorite classes to take at MSMS. The class is taught by biology teacher Dr. Gibson. The reason I find the class so interesting is because Epidemiology is the career path I want to pursue. Today in class we had a lecture on two by two squares. In this, we learned foundational concepts in Epi such as difference measures and risk/rate differences.

Once Epi is finished, I head to my last class of the day– University English II, taught by God, or Dr. Curtis. Normally we don’t spend more than 30 minutes in this class because Dr. Curtis is god. It’s nice to end the day with a chill, slow paced class.

After I leave Dr. Curtis’, I embark on my journalism responsibilities. I interview my friend Kelsey for an upcoming spotlight article. Kelsey was recently chosen to give the class declamation at graduation.

After interviewing Kelsey, I quickly move to edit and finish up my articles that will be published later that night.

5 p.m. rolls around, and it is time for the editor’s meeting where we go over articles that will be published that night and make a ‘News Budget’ of articles to be published in the next week’s publication of the Vision.

As an editor, I spend a lot of time Monday night in Hooper working on the paper. Most nights I arrive at Hooper around 4:45 p.m. and depart around 7:30 p.m. After helping my friend and Editor-in-Chief of the Vision, Helen Peng, publish the articles for the night, I head back to the dorms to order pizza and then take a nap.

I wake up around 10:30 for roomcheck and then head out for my favorite part about Mondays. We all meet up in my friend Taylor’s room and catch up with each other, joking about random things and relaying the crazy stories that our weekends held.

Somewhere bewtween making fun of Taylor’s boxed milk, and hearing my suitemate Kyle’s snarky comments, I get very little work done; however, that doesn’t matter to me. This is the last semester of high school, and for me, this means enjoying the small amount of time I have left with my friends.

Somewhere around 2 a.m. I trek back to my room, if I don’t pass out on Taylor’s couch. Tuesday’s alarm rings but thankfully, I get an extra two hours of sleep. On Tuesdays I normally have two labs–Biochem and Epi; however this week Dr. Gibson is taking students on Science Fair Competitions, so I only have Biochem lab.

After class on Tuesdays, I am famished, so normally me and Timothy go out into Columbus and grab a bite to eat. I come back, work for a little and then nap.

If you can’t tell, I nap a lot.

But it all works out. This is the lesson I have learned senior year. Everything will eventually work out. Although you may not get that dire scholarship offer that will determine the college you go to, it all works out. Although you may barely pass that Heintz test, it will all work out. Although one of your closest friends gets kicked out three months before graduation, it will all work out in the end!