School Hacks

[by Yan Li]

HACK #1:

There’s a great deal of dust and unidentified particles between your keyboard keys. When you try using a tissue to wipe it off, it only works on the surface of the keys, not the spaces in between them. No worries. Just clean the space between your keyboard keys with tape or the sticky part of a post-it. Your keyboard will finally be dirt-free!

HACK #2:

“What do I have first? Math or English? Wait, or is it P.E.?” You frantically search through your backpack for your schedule, but it is lost in the sea of worksheets, forms, and soon-to-be-due papers.

Or, if you once took a photo of your schedule, you scroll through hundreds of photos that your friends have spammed your phone with. Well, there is a easier way.

Make your phone lock screen your school schedule.

Now, all you have to do is whip out your phone, press the power button, and your schedule will appear. This helps you remember your schedule faster, too. When you have fully memorized your schedule, you can change the wallpaper.

HACK #3:

The volume is set to the loudest on your phone alarm but it still doesn’t wake you up. You’re one of those heavy sleepers. You lay on your bed, dead to the world. Well, there is a simple solution to your problem. Just place your phone into a glass to amplify the sound of your alarm. If you run out of options and need a speaker for your music, this would work as well.

HACK #4:

You stop to think. Today is the 30th so is tomorrow the new month? Or does this month have 31 days? Theres an easy way to check that requires no internet and no calendars. All you need is your two hands. Literally. Place your hands into fists, one next to the other, with your knuckles facing up. You can figure out how many days the months have with the knuckles on your hand. Each knuckle is a month with 31 days, and each space between the knuckles is a month with 30 days (or in February’s case 28). The first knuckle is January, the first space is February, the second knuckle is March, and so on.

(Most of you have probably learned this in elementary school, but this is still useful.)

HACK #5:

Sometimes you are required you to memorize the digits of pi up to a certain number of decimal places. Well, with this hack, you can easily remember the first seven digits of pi. Cool party trick, huh?

You can remember the value of pi up to 7 decimal places (3.1415926) by counting the number of letters in the words of “May I have a large container of coffee?” That’s probably the thought racing through our heads during most of the school day anyways.