Pregaming Stuyvesant

Today marks my momentous induction into the legendary high school, Stuyvesant. I have been training my heart by dosing myself with coffee concentrate every morning to prepare for when I will have to inhale Celsius-Alani-matcha-five-hour-energy-espresso combos to unlock the 25th hour. I sit nervously in the Murray Kahn Theater among a crowd of similarly hyperactive prefreshies. It is time to commence the Spring Open House.

However, the air is tense and silent. We are met with nothing but an empty stage and a lack of authority presence. I exchange confused looks with my neighbors, but nobody seems to have a clue about what is meant to be going on (and nobody has quite yet developed the defiance against authority commonplace in the Stuyvesant population). 

Suddenly, a startling boom resonates throughout the auditorium. Confetti explodes from every nook and cranny. Stunned, I cautiously peel a piece of paper from my face and find it to be a chunk of a college essay application. I catch sight of the line “I hate the letters ‘S,’ ‘T,’ and ‘D’” before I gingerly paw the tear-stained page away from me.

“Chillax,” say the bored Big Sib Chairs in unison. They have apparently appeared out of the secret void beneath the stage. They each display a white banner with a message saying “welcm 2 sty” in 12-point Comic Sans font. Clearly, every cent of printer space had to be budgeted to make room for that luxurious Big Sib budget. “These application papers are to prepare you for what is to come,” the Big Sib Chairs continue, intoning in their hive mind drawl. The entire crowd overcomes their shock and begins screaming out of their minds, drawing the mouths of their overseers to frown. The Big Sibs then sigh and make quiet coyote symbols which instantly silences everybody. Shoot, they’ve figured out elementary school tactics still work on us.

“Well, we can already tell your capacity for going above and beyond typical human volume levels will be perfect for our future half-floor warriors and cafeteria delinquents,” they drone dryly. “Fortunately, our plans for today will hopefully… quench your naive thirst for violence and obnoxiousness.” Before any of us could voice our terrified concerns, they clap their hands and say, “Behold! Let the Open House commence!”

I might have cursed myself for not believing the rumors of this school being a mental health asylum if I weren’t too busy fighting my way through the pack of people that had formed and booking it straight out of there. Time and space “lowkirkenuinely” seems to warp around me as I speed past the hootin’ and hollerin’ in the band room, the AEDs by the pool that I will never give a second glance to after Health class, and the rats sniffing for crumbs in the shadows of the half floor, until I slam face-first into a truly imposing and menacing figure. An eerie, eldritch sound emanates throughout the air. I peek upwards, praying that this will not be the day my kindergarten playground girlfriend catches up to me.

“Take off your hood,” someone growls menacingly. I clutch at my floppy mechanical bunny-eared hood in despair. “Take off your hood,” the figure snaps again, now inching closer. I wildly look around for anything to defend myself with. Oh, look! A newspaper rack! Something called… The Spectator? Oh well. I suppose it shouldn’t be a simple spectator to this mad spectacle. I seize the first few copies and swing them in my attacker’s direction, buying me just enough time to resume my mad dash through the hall. I beg for the escalator to the third floor to not be broken. Unfortunately, I have rotten luck.

I find myself in what I thought was an open space. Finally, relief at last! However, red eyes shine through the dark, and a group of uncs steadily creep toward me like a pack of wolves. “Why beest this scrawny newbie doing in our elite juni’r atrium?” one hisses in ancient Shakespearean English, slightly muffled by their wiry beard. I gulp, raise my hands, and stumble backwards. Another hunchbacked figure points at the ink stains on my hands and shouts gruffly, over my blubbering apologies, “This distemperate youngst’r hath defiledth ye fusty w’rks of The Spectat’r! Those gents has’t taint’d and degrad’d our sacred, life-long lab’rs! F’r this, we might not but executeth the lown.”

My heart stops for probably the tenth time that day. Wow, this is unparalleled cardio training. Luckily, my new pursuers do not have the same youthful spryness as I. I leave them in the dust, vaguely listening to their huffing and puffing about how taking yoga for two semesters straight did nothing for their stamina. Oh well. Maybe the fourth floor will prove better. 

The moment I step onto the fourth floor, a friendly (finally!) upperclassman hands me a neatly printed packet titled “Advanced Placement Mathematics For Incoming Freshmen.” Eager to prove that I belong in an honors math section, I grab the paper from him and immediately start to answer the questions. It isn’t until question 12 that I notice that something is wrong. I blink. Is it really asking me to prove that the slope of the Hudson Staircase approaches the angle at which the cafeteria pizza was baked? I really want to look confident, to show that I belong here, even though I have no idea how the slope of a staircase is related to the cafeteria pizza, so I endure. I can feel my heart rate spike with every new, nonsensical question. Eventually, it is too much. I dramatically throw the packet across the room and yell that this is nonsense, rushing out the door.

While recovering from that traumatic “placement test,” I stumble into the fifth floor cafeteria. There, I see a group of teachers setting up a table labeled “Free Snacks for Incoming Freshmen!” Feeling relieved by the warm welcome, I excitedly reach for a small cup that looks suspiciously like lime soda and smells like chemicals. The teacher offering it to me grins while saying, “It’s a school tradition, you’ll love it! It makes up half our students’ diets, right alongside sleep deprivation!” Unfortunately, that “tradition” seems to involve an audacious amount of caffeinated rocket fuel that people call Monster Energy. As I stand in the middle of the cafeteria trying to maintain my dignity, the clique of upperclassmen smiles at me approvingly, as if I had just completed a sacred hazing Stuyvesant ritual for freshmen.

Suddenly, my stomach lurches. I run out of the cafeteria holding my stomach with both hands until I am left with no options but to puke on the Sophomore Bar. I feel bad, but it seems that the sophomores have seen grosser. After surviving the atrocities of the last five floors, I find myself in the library. Surely, the library would be safe, right? A quiet, studious atmosphere has never done me wrong. An upperclassman hands me a sheet of paper titled “Suggested Reading List From Your Favorite Upperclassmen.” It looks innocent enough until I realize that the further I read down the list, the stranger the titles become. 101 Ways to NOT Contribute to a Group Project? The Art of Staring at the Clock While Waiting for the End Bell to Ring? I look up from the paper to ask the upperclassman if he’s given me the wrong list only to find him gone. 

I wander out and down the stairs in the vain hope of finding someone reasonable for once. A Big Sib emerges (thankfully it appears that they are not under the effects of creepy mind control) and I follow them up the escalators from the fifth to seventh floor. The moment I step onto the seventh floor, the lights go out, and I lose my Big Sib. Terrified, I run until I end up in a room at the end of the hallway. I frantically search for the light switch, but they refuse to work normally and start violently flickering. All I can see are posters saying “Take AP Bio at your own risk.” In the corner of the room, I see a body lying still, when suddenly, the body starts twitching. It stands and starts walking toward me. I scurry backwards until my back hits the wall. As the body creeps closer, I realize it is the teacher every freshman wants to have: Ms. Maggio. “Come take AP Bio with me! We’ll dissect labubus together,” she says. I grab the nearest object I can find (a plastic axolotl) and throw it in front of me to create a distraction. It is only when I start crawling up the stairs to the ninth floor that I register what she said.

I make it to the top of the staircase and open a squeaky green door to realize I am on the chemistry floor. Maybe some intermolecular forces could create some strong bonds for me. I wander through the hallways as I hunt for the one for me, when I trip and end up in the arms of a super senior?? “Hey there, you look a little thirsty. Maybe I can take you to 16 Handles to cool off?” he says.

I run as far as my two tiny feet can take me and rush down the stairs, ending up on… the eighth floor? Everything is upside down. Wait. Why aren’t my feet on the ground? Where did my 24k gold labubu go? I hope some desperate junior that was skipping physics didn’t take it. Then it suddenly hit me: this floor defies gravity just like Elphaba. I push against any surface I could find, trying to get to the staircase, and thankfully it works, as every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I pull, push, swim, fly, and finally make it to the staircase, running up the stairs to try to find an exit .

I walk through the hallways of the tenth floor and peek inside one of the rooms but suddenly get pushed inside. The door locks behind me. “Late for the 100th time. Have you ever been on time?” asks the teacher. I look for the nearest seat to avoid thinking about how one of the freshmen looked a lot like trallalero trallallà. “As punishment for your tardiness, you must draw every single piece of art in the Met or you will face suspension. You have one week. I suggest you start sooner rather than waiting until 12:00 a.m. on the day it’s due.” I wouldn’t be able to do that even if I pulled all nighters everyday of the week! Not even Monster can save me this time. But it is too late to transfer out—I have already accepted the offer to come. I guess I’d have to promise an upperclassman my first-born child so that they’d do my Met Project for me before I even started school. 

Thus, I dash out in search of someone older. I travel up the gloomy stairs of the tenth floor, unthinkingly pushing past an unlocked door, only to reach the… roof? I thought Stuy had 13 floors. Why was I already at the top? Also, why did no one tell me about the pool at the top of the building? Oh how beautiful it is; there are rides everywhere, as if I’d just stepped into a five-star hotel with the world’s biggest waterpark ever. I think about how spending every day from birth on SHSAT questions was finally worth it, when what looks like a six-foot-tall second-semester senior comes and aggressively asks, “What is this puny little prefreshie doing here? Did you lose your mommy?” Uh oh. I have a feeling things are only going to get worse from here.

“S-sorry,” I mumble. “I was just trying to explore the school.” Suddenly, the senior pushes me against the edge of the roof, and I see my life flash before my eyes. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m only 12; I haven’t even failed my first test yet.” He laughs as I plead for him to let go of me.

“Don’t worry fella. You’ll have plenty of tests to fail when you come to Stuy,” he says as he pushes me off the roof. I scream as the air is sucked out of my lungs. I am falling faster than the speed of sound. I fall until I end up in the arms of… Principal Yu? He said, “Welcome to Stuy!” I can’t wait to start the decline of my mental health at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School!