The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Well, it seems as though I'm running out of summer quite rapidly.

School starts next Tuesday. The Walla Walla Fair, long a herald of the break's end, will already be in full swing by the time you read this. The evenings are starting to get a little chilly, and my garden's finally yielding produce.

For the most part, the elapsed time was uneventful. I worked from home, started a couple projects, visited family, hosted family, applied for a scholarship or two, baked way too much cake, and hugged my chickens.

But that's not to say that it was completely meritless.

The following is a list of things I learned this summer. Some will save me a little trouble in class. Others are of nearly no use in most life contexts, but I'm adding them anyway to beef up my final tally so that my academic advisor doesn't accuse me of slacking off.

Here goes: - Never, ever, ever start off a speech at an election (whether that election is at Girls State, school, or just anywhere in general) with "Hi, my name is Jane and I'm running for Auditor," or anything like that.

Odds are that you've already been introduced and the position you're running for announced. A lot of candidates don't realize this and use a painfully predictable intro. As a result, when your audience hears you start your speech off just like the seventeen people who spoke before you did, they start nodding off almost instantaneously. - If you ever happen to be running for Attorney General in a mock government scenario, you can greatly increase your odds of being favored by swing voters by adding a well-incorporated lawyer joke to your campaign poster. My poster at Girls State was divided into two halves. The top half was bordered in the most putrefying shade of green in the marker box and said

"Q: What's the difference between the average attorney and a bucket of scum? A: The bucket." The bottom half was done up in patriotic colors and said "Emma P. for A.G.

- Everyone else PAILS in comparison." - Don't talk too much about Girls

State after the fact, or people might realize that a sleep-deprived weeklong mock government event in the allergy capital of North

America was the highlight of your summer. - Fast internet cuts computer-based productivity in half. - Thus proclaimeth the universe: If thou art a teenager, thou shalt be sleepy, and thine early bedtime is in folly, for thou shall not fall asleep until thy wretched biological clock is good and ready. - Your decorated cake will never, ever, ever look anything like the one in the Wilton manual without years of highly intensive practice.

However, as long as it contains sugar, very few people under thirty will care. - If a still-teething adolescent cattle dog is curled up in your armchair, don't attempt to sit there. These scenarios always end with you hobbling off in pain and the dog peacefully drifting off once more. - If you're looking for sources of sympathy after losing out on an obscure Internet scholarship, save yourself some time and don't bother with younger brothers.