Photo Credit: Pinterest

As a student of IHA, I can almost guarantee your bag weighs 1,000 pounds (or at least it feels like it). The teachers want their students to be prepared for anything.

That is exactly what is in my bag: anything and everything.  I have late passes, colored markers, crayons, and dead highlighters and pens. Nothing seems to leave my backpack.  I have old snacks from long lab classes in September slowly rotting in my backpack, and do not even get me started on all the notebooks and folders.

Some teachers just love to give out handouts, so it is safe to say I probably have at least three trees worth of paper in my bag. I also always carry my calculator because I know the day I do not bring in that dinosaur, my teacher will tell me to pull it out of my bag.

Among all the food, markers, pens, and smeared lead from my dirty pencils, I have my headphones.  The little ounce of hope that I will get a study in one of my classes, allowing me to hopefully get on some movie website without getting blocked.

Photo Credit: About Home

Then I have my phone, which I eagerly wait for lunch to be able to use. I cannot forget my beloved computer! My computer is my best friend. It is up with me until 3 a.m. writing research papers. It is by my side all day and all night.  Since it is like my family, when something happens to my computer, I immediately bring it to the best doctor around: Mr. Hotz. Our computers are our lifelines; we need them and we love them.

Lastly, there is the sweatshirt.  Some teachers will allow you to wear it when it is below zero degrees in the classrooms, while others are not so lenient.

For all our extra curricular activities, whether it is sports, acting, or our new dance team, you have at least one more bag to carry into school with you every morning.  In this 2,000 pound bag, I have about 17 water bottles, 15 of which are empty, my extra layers of clothes in case it is cold, an infinite number of headbands, and probably two pairs of shoes, if not more.

Along with all this, I still have more food in my bag! It would take me too long to count the wrappers or deformed Kind bars and power bars in my bag, so I will estimate in the low twenties.

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Juggling my school backpack along with my lacrosse or tennis bag is a fight that I never seem to win. Doors always seem to shut right before I get to them, and I never have a free hand because I am also fumbling around with my ID and lunch.

You are most probably being weighed down by about 3,000 pounds: 1000 pounds from your school backpack and 2000 from your sports bag. This makes it absolutely impossible to walk the treacherous IHA stairs.

I can imagine that every person’s backpack varies in its contents, so this is just a general overview.  If I were to search my bag right now, I would probably find much more food, because what else would an IHA girl have in her bag? Books? Well those too, but predominantly food!

By Reagan Bossolina ’17, Staff Writer