Rachel Tam: Episode 3

Tamtam’s anti-advice column:

How do you combat senioritis?

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

In this case, if you can’t beat senioritis, jump headfirst into the alluring waves of procrastination and laziness. But if you are still trying to fight senioritis, here are three handy tips.

First, try running a fun experiment on “The Effect of Absurdly Low Marks on the Rescindment of my University Offers.” I suggest that you try to see how many R’s you can get before your university of choice realizes that you are LITERALLY FAILING your classes and rescinds your offer. After you have an offer rescinded, you will realize that if you don’t get your act together you will be taking an involuntary gap year. This will 420% inspire you to start working super hard to bring your mark up (or else you won’t be graduating).

Second, if that experiment doesn’t inspire you enough, you can always try osmosis learning. To do this, go to sleep with your chemistry textbook as your pillow. (IT’S ALSO GREAT FOR EXTRA NECK SUPPORT!) As you know from your science classes, particles move from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration. This means that the chemistry knowledge densely packed in the textbook will flow through passive transport into your brain.

Third, if both foolproof methods above have failed you, you can try paying hardworking Grade 11’s to do your work. Do you remember how hard you worked in Grade 11? (If you didn’t work hard in grade 11, think of how hard some of your friends worked last year) You can harvest that youthful academic drive by recruiting some Grade 11’s to write your tests for you, complete your homework, and do your assignments for you. I mean, you will be breaking Havergal’s Academic Code of Conduct, but who cares! You are paying them for their troubles, so it isn’t morally incorrect, RIGHT?

Lastly, you can band together with your also struggling peers to combat senioritis productively. Now that I’ve decided where I’m going to study at next year, my mind is stuck in the exciting future, but my body is stuck at a desk grinding away at tests, essays, and presentations. This division of my mind and my body has resulted in some half-hearted assignments, a couple of “Havergal fails,” and uncompleted homework.

Though these upcoming weeks will be a painful time, you should give yourself time to take breaks. You may have little to no motivation to actually do your work, try to find things that you are genuinely interested in and use that to drive you to keep up with your classes. Of course, you don’t need to knock yourself out with schoolwork, but just know that your time as a Havergal student are coming to a close and you should enjoy the remaining classes you have here before it’s too late.

How do I organize my email?

Sadly, I don’t think it’s possible to have an organized email. I have tried for many years to keep my email neat and tidy. But I have been cursed by the email gods! Whenever I go on a deleting email spree, there always seem to more emails to read through.

So instead of trying to go through your email and delete the unnecessary ones, JUST DELETE ALL YOUR EMAILS! No emails = a clean inbox! Sure, you may miss some important deadlines and meetings but you will be greeted by the absence of emails every time you instinctively open up your inbox.

If you are too paranoid of deleting important emails (like a little wuss – real men don’t use email to plan meetings, they send messages via earth-shatteringly loud cavemen noises: ARGGGG? ARGGGGGGGHH!). You can try to set up another email address. For example, I get less important people in my life to send emails to anonymouseguyfawkes@gmail.com (I wish I was joking, but this is a real email I use). This way, I am able to divert the trash to another account. Just like how Canada ships their garbage to the Philippines, you can push annoying email senders out of your primary inbox. Though you aren’t actually decreasing the amount of emails you are receiving, you are keeping some emails out of sight. And out of sight means out of mind.

However, these methods will only work for the toughest of the tough. And for those gentler at heart, I would recommend setting up labels for your email. Using the settings menu, go to labels, and you can create labels to your heart’s content. These labels will appear at the left-side of your inbox and you can drag appropriate emails into those labels to sort them.

Another fun tool is the “Filter” feature. As a Grad, I get a lot of university emails so I’ve set up an automatic filter to sort through my emails for messages that contains the word “university” and then apply the label “Uni Stuff” onto those emails. This filter helps me keep track of any important university-related emails that come through to me because those emails are automatically nested under a label so they can’t get lost in my inbox.

I also picked up another trick from Ms. De Boer (shoutout to her!) where you mark any email that you need to respond to as Unread and then sort your inbox by Unread at the top. This keeps the emails that require action from you top priority.

What do you suggest Grade 11s do in the summer to prepare for Grade 12?

Warm up your tear ducts for some quality breakdowns! I massage the inner corners of my eyes daily to ensure the smooth flow of my tears. I don’t want any of that crying-out-of-one-eye nonsense. Big girls cry out of both eyes.

On top of that, last summer I spent all of my time participating in “voluntourism”. I spent my time pretending to help those in need by doing tasks that I was totally qualified for: giving root canals plus pulling teeth, caring for endangered monkeys, and teaching people how to write in German. Between doing these tasks, I went with a bunch of other privileged teenagers on tours of the more posh areas. I was able to make a real difference on the lives of those I “helped” because my patients ended up with no teeth (and often were crying because how happy they were!), the monkeys ended up even more endangered, and people learned grammatically incorrect French.

Honestly, the monkeys looked sad. And after I left, I realized that voluntourism is a bunch of hogwash. The teenagers who partake in it are just trying to boost their resume by doing something that may look good on the outside, but doesn’t actually have any positive impact on the world.

During the summer after Grade 11, take advantage of the time to give back to your community, to work your first job, prepare for university applications (if you’re an overachiever), and relax before Grade 12 starts. Volunteer at places/with organizations that you stand for, find employment at a fast-food joint, if you’re thinking of applying to the US I would recommend studying for the SAT/ACT and drafting your Common-App essay: your future self will thank you, and take time to watch the shows you want to, hang out with your friends, and take time off to destress.

Grade 12 is hard not only because of university applications (which are a beast themselves), but because of the stress of your peers, parents, and other adults in your life who have expectations for you. Try not to lose sense of who you are and what you want to be. It’s so easy to get caught up writing application essays about a person that you are not. If you use your summer wisely, you can get to know yourself better and figure out what you enjoy most.

As this portion of “TamTam’s Anti-Advice Column” draws to a close, I wish you all the best. If you need any more advice feel free to reach out to me at racheltam00@gmail.com.

See ya later!

Rachel Tam (TamTam)