Summer is finally winding down. With mere weeks until school’s back in session, it’s time for me to start panicking and finish up all my break-time projects before I’m saddled with classwork again.

At the end of every summer, I like to take stock of all the little things I’ve learned, if only to reassure myself that I haven’t entirely blown my vast expanse of free time.

The (partial) list is as follows:

• If you attempt to make divinity candy on a humid day, even if the weather looks perfectly dry from inside the kitchen, the end product will resemble sugar-encrusted blobs of wh...