There’s a lot of things that characterize third period for me. A list of such things goes as follows:

• Pretending like I’ve read The Great Gatsby
• Looking over at where Ella is sitting to my left/behind me depending on how I decide to sit for the day and wondering what the giant stack of papers she brings are for
  • Subsequently, this is followed by the brief interlude of debating the possibilities of Ella being a working teacher in disguise – Ella, if you read this, or if someone from Ella’s table is reading this, please ask her if she is or isn’t a mini-teacher artificially created by the Teacher’s Union. This is very important to me.
• Mooching snacks off of my tablemates – peep Hannah’s second blog post to see the cookies she baked that I may or may not have eaten three of (four? I think it was four)
• Taking a ten-ish minute power nap after staying up past one a.m. for AP Chemistry and/or AP Stats
• Finding dry Play-Dough and using Vani’s hand sanitizer to try (and fail) to revive it

Now, as we proceed to the following paragraphs, I’ll reach the final (and maybe most iconic) thing that characterizes third period for me, note that the following paragraphs are only loosely based on some maybe facts and a lot of semi-educated guesses.

Meet the multiverse of my AP Literature table – here we have all the different versions of my tablemates and I, a.k.a. The people who sit at our table when it isn’t Third Period. Role call goes as follows, and we have…

• First Period
• Second Period
• Third Period (that’s us!)
• Sixth Period who I’m not entirely sure actually exists because I’m squinting at that above image to try and make out the words
• Seventh Period

As though we are in a forbidden romance challenging the likes of Romeo and Juliet, we have set up an anonymous correspondence of Post-It letters, signed off with no names nor classes, simply the period of the day. And guys, as I write this, I am aware that this sounds like the set-up for a potential new YA novel. If you see it on shelves, physical or virtual in 20 years, then know that you were indeed watching the origin story for it unfold in Mrs. Hitzeman’s Third Period AP Literature and Composition class.

Every day, when we settle at my table, there is a one in four chance that I will be the one to uncover our latest Post-It. There’s even a mailbox! The Post-It letters will always be nestled safely in the clear box that sits at the center of our table, and opening it up and reaching in never fails to make me feel like Laurie from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women as he checks his mail from the March ladies.

Alright, now we may get into the not-so-factually-accurate parts of this blog post: I am going to unravel the mystery of who our anonymous correspondances lie with.

Second and Seventh Period are obviously involved in an enemies-to-lovers subplot arc of this anonymous Post-It correspondence YA novel. We’re talking a tacos versus pizza superiority rivalry that will pipeline into a grudging friendship before eventually entering the peak high-school romance that will last a solid three weeks. Maybe.

Fifth Period, whose favorite artificial fruit flavor is lemon-slash-lime (yeah, that’s weird, I know, and this is full shade to anybody whose favorite flavor isn’t blue raspberry) are definitely aliens in disguise as Huskies. This is further confirmed by their apparent lack of knowledge for motifs in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I am wholly convinced that humanity has made first contact with aliens, but they are simply hiding in the skins of highschoolers. Note that they are also the first to directly call someone at our table by name, which should be inaccessible information to them… unless they were also telepathic.

Second Period, who hold a fascination with Shrek (look to the bottom right corner of the image), obviously has a member amongst them with a parental unit that helped to develop this infamously green franchise. Their obvious misspelling to “Cherk” is simply a ploy designed to throw me off this line of reasoning.

Sixth Period – and I swear, those guys exist – has only ever responded a sparse amount of times. Statistically, I think they’ve answered a whopping number of (drumroll please) one time. As such, it is natural that one comes to the conclusion that Sixth Period is a ghost class that does not entirely exist, unless you enter Room 246 on an odd day of the week, when temperatures in Room 263 lie somewhere between the fifties and sixties. Yes, it can be confirmed that that is the room cold enough for ghosts to thrive in, all the way in Room 248.

Should Mrs. Hitzeman be reading this, and should she somehow still exist in this room space when it is not AP Lit, a fact that I find highly unlikely as I’m under the notion that she and all of the contents of our class disappear at the end of the period in a way that is not dissimilar to the Fairy Godmother at midnight, I will need neither a confirmation nor a denial of my totally plausible theories regarding the other receivers of these Post-Its.

By now, as I wrap up this second blog post, you’re probably wondering what the entire purpose of this was.

That’s right. This is, in fact, 900ish words designed to encourage you to disregard the Play-Dough that is left out to appeal to the inner kindergarteners in us, and to leave a Post-It for the enigmas that sit in your seat when you’re not there.