At school, I'm a "Big Sib." As a part of the Big Sibs program, before the first day of school rolls along, I have to talk to freshmen about high school. Over the course of last year, Big Sib rising seniors were chosen to help ease freshmen into the world of horrifying stress, mountainous levels of homework, unhealthy sleep voids, and soul-selling for the sake of college application.

So far, the "Little Sibs" are comfortable with the building, but that doesn't mean they know what they're really getting themselves into. For freshmen especially, the first few days are designed for deceit and deceit alone. First, the teachers introduce themselves, and it takes a while before gym starts up, which means there's barely any work involved at all.

But before all that, is preparation. So I decided to share just a sliver of Big Sib knowledge.

Schol supplies are a strange subject.

School starts on a Thursday. That means I'll go supply shopping on a Saturday. It literally takes two days sometimes just for teachers to go over the syllabus and supplies. Almost everyone already knows that, but not freshmen, because people usually forget to tell them not to jump the gun.

I received an email regarding school supplies - about notebooks and binders in particular - from one of my enthusiastic Little Sibs, who had the right idea to ask for some clarification on this. It might seems excessive to ask because it might seem like it should all be intuitive, but it's admittedly not.

Lots of teachers ask for specific supplies for their class, and sometimes, organizing lockers and supply trade-offs during the school day becomes cumbersome for the inexperienced.

The real problem arises when teachers differentiate between wanting a section in a binder and having a binder only dedicated to their class. Sometimes, it really does make a difference.

When I began taking AP World History in freshman year, my teacher wanted a full binder dedicated to the class. That seemed pretty reasonable, so I went out and got a large binder just for that class. By the end of the semester, I couldn't make anything else fit into it. I had to get another binder just to finish the second half of the year for one class. Meanwhile, I only needed 1 other binder for all my other classes, per semester.

So what I do instead is bring a good chunk of loose-leaf for the first day, and maybe one binder that I'll decide what to do with later, just for show.

At this point, I have a large collection of pens and mechanical pencils, some still from freshman year when I bought 50 pens or so on discount for super cheap. I have to admit, I mostly just take advantage of One Simple Trick™ during the school year. People are lazy and forgetful and will undoubtably forget their writing utensils. Nobody comes back for them, and the janitors literally just throw away everything they find. If it's the end of the day, you can already know it's better just to save a functioning pen from futility in the trash. It's practically recycling done ratchet!

So the real trick to going back to school prepared is to be unafraid of not being prepared for the first day back to school. It seems completely counterintuitive and sounds like terrible advice, but if you have looseleaf, you're golden, and set for at least the first 3 or 4 days.

But, please, make sure to follow the teachers' instructions and recommendations. Some teachers will get mad at you for not following a light recommendation.

So the moral of the story is to be like my enthusiastic Little Sib, and never be too afraid to ask questions.