It’s not mine at all — it’s from an old, very lit teacher-specific copypasta that my twelfth-grade English teacher shared with us (she got it from a conference). Here’s a bunch of them from the UPenn website!

My favorite storied student simile is: “The boat glided across the lake just like a bowling ball wouldn’t.”

He would only get yelled at a little bit by my childhood dance teacher, which is better than most of us fared learning attitudes.

I’m one of two women in my class of first-year PhD students, and we get called each other’s names constantly. We are different in eye color and stature; she wears glasses and I don’t. But to be fair, we do both have brown hair, so that makes us preeeeeeeeeeeeeetty much the same person.

It was the eyeshadow that got me too! I was nine in 2002, but I remember thinking frosted eyeshadow was the pinnacle of cool and begging to get to wear it. (My mom said no, because the eyelids of a fourth grader were not the best spot for frosted eyeshadow, but my cool friend Lauren and I would always wear it during…

Ehhhhhhhh, I can think of six people from my public high school that ended up Ivies. It was a fairly big high school in a college town, though, so we had strong AP program and stuff like that.

Did anyone ever read the Gemma Doyle series by Libba Bray? Because this trailer made me realize that Eva Green is pretty much exactly how I pictured Miss Moore. (Sorry for typecasting you, Eva. You are a delight in that type, though.)

Being licked from front to bike does prevent UTIs, but I’m not really sure it promotes road safety for cyclists.

My favorite person in the whole wide world (a real-life Leslie Knope, even though she hates Parks and Rec) sent me a glorious Galentine’s package. It involved a wordsearch. It’s our first year ever not living in the same town, and I’m missing her terribly.

They’re such a great thing to collect! I loved them as a kid, although I can remember even then thinking about how unrealistic it seemed that Nancy was such a shenanigans magnet.

Yup! They were my grandmother’s in high school.

In the editions I have, Ned is always getting “kidnaped,” which I always thought was weird, but it’s apparently an accepted archaic spelling.

After the first season of Sherlock came out, I composed this long, adoring letter to Benedict Cumberbatch (I figured an old-fashioned letter would make me stand out from the internet fans). But, being as wise and reasonable I am, I decided to play it cool by not sending the letter so that when I finally met Benedict,…

I read 1st through 4th when I was eight (because that’s what was out at the time) and it was GLORIOUS. I did get really scared about parts of the fourth one, but not in a traumatizing way or anything. I think the 5th through 7th books are a lot darker, but they operate on a couple of different levels. So he could…

Thanks for being wicked, nasty funny and also one of the nicest people around these parts. Good luck with your hair whipping and hamburger eating and whatnot.

Okay, glad to hear it worked for you. And the food advice is really helpful! I’ve been worried about the logistics of food and water.

Yeah, I just moved to a place with a tooooooon of people in their twenties, so it was surprisingly straightforward. Good luck once you find a city with better pickings!

Hmmmmm, okay. Mine aren’t quite Xanax level on the short trips we’ve taken, but I’ll definitely look into a calming collar. Thanks!

There is indeed much wailing and gnashing of teeth when they’re in the crate. They’ve got harnesses and leashes, so I thought I might attach the leashes to the carseat fastener thing in the back seat. So then maybe they can roam around in the back but not be distractingly snuggly up front with me.

Do any of you wise folks have advice for long car trips with cats? I’ve been making them hang out in their collars and harnesses for a while to get them used to it. But is there anything weird I should make sure to have on hand?