The most obviously important information first: What do you need to bring?

• Several sharpened No. 2 pencils (with erasers) for all multiple-choice answer sheets.
• Black or dark-blue ballpoint pens for free-response questions in most exams.
• Your school code. (If you are a homeschooled student, you will be given a code at the time of the exam.)
• A watch (in case your exam room does not have a clock that you can see easily).
• Your social security number for identification purposes. (If you provide it, the number will appear on your AP Grade Reports.)
• An AP authorized calculator if you’re taking an AP Calculus AB, Calculus BC, Chemistry, Physics, or Statistics Exam.
• A ruler or straightedge if you’re taking an AP Physics Exam.
• A photo I.D. if you do not attend the school where you are taking the exam.

Now that you’ve finished  packing your bags and feel ready and motivated to head out the door, stop for a moment, put your backpack down and remove:

• Books, compasses, correction fluid, dictionaries, highlighters, or notes.
• Rulers and straightedges (except as noted above).
• Scratch paper (notes can be made on portions of the exam booklets).
• Typewriting equipment, computers (except as noted for students with disabilities), or calculators (except as noted above).
• Watches that beep or have an alarm.
• Portable listening or recording devices — even with headphones — or photographic equipment.
• Beepers, cellular phones, MP3 players, or personal digital assistants (PDAs).
• Clothing (t-shirts, for example) with subject-related information.

Clean of all contraband materials? Good.

Now, did you eat breakfast? No? Back to the table for you.

The AP step-but-step survival guide:

1.)    Go to bed early. Get 8-9 hours of sleep.

2.)    Eat a good breakfast. Protein, nuts and blueberries are brain food.

3.)    Show up early. Be ready to go and don’t let anything surprise you.

4.)    Trust yourself. Eight months of school prove that you know your stuff. Just sit back and let your brain do its work.

5.)    On break, get up and walk around. Eat something, have something to drink and go to the bathroom. Walk back into that room ready.

6.)    Watch the clock during your essays.

7.)    Congratulate yourself. You survived your AP tests!

Good luck, test takers. Knock em’ dead.

Many opportunities have become available in terms of volunteering. Many GFH students have taken these opportunities, helping others out of the kindness of their hearts. Wednesday, April 28th and Thursday, April 29th, the Special Olympics held pledge drives downtown at their main offices. GFH students volunteered in increments of 3 hours, taking their own time out of school to help others. Sophomore Holly Capp has been volunteering, this project another along the way. “I have volunteered for a variety of events, from helping autistic students at Loy elementary to golf and bowling. It’s a good feeling when you see how your help has impacted someone else.” Capp recalls the first time she had volunteered. “I was in 4th grade, when one of my friends had been involved in the Special Olympics. My friends and I decided to participate and help out to cheer our friend on. We were all so happy to have helped,” Capp said. Wednesday, Capp volunteered to help out with the Radiothon. She took pledges over the phone from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. “We were given a handout explaining how to correctly take information for donations.” Sophomore Alyssa Kimball also volunteered for the Special Olympics this year. “I became involved last year with my Gymnastics group, and chose to volunteer again this year.”

Once a year for Montana students, art marries itself with fun and offers classes on duct tape art. This union, called the Montana Art Interscholastic (MAI) trip, offers art students the opportunity to embark to another city and enjoy its unique artistic offerings.

This year they travelled to Missoula and stayed at Hellgate, where they put on group productions in hand made costumes and attended seminars on painting, drawing, photography and, of course, duct tape.

“We took a class on duct tape art,” senior art student Rachel Leathe said. “That was pretty fun.”

In addition to classes on colored adhesives, the artists also covered more conventional methods.

“There were classes on watercolor, photography and print making,” Leathe said.

Leathe also attended that same event last year and said that the annuall event circulates thorugh all the art classes to offer an opportunity to go. This year the GFH and CMR artists shared a bus for the trip down and back.

Students attending the MAI workshop at Missoula Hellgate put on a play with costumes made by the participants. The workshop took place in the Hellgate gytmnasium on April 24 and 25.

 Lodged deep with a bustling and otherwise undisturbed metropolis of New York, lays a peaceful, quiet, and very green oasis. This virtual paradise, Fordham University; New York’s Jesuit College. Upon stepping of the subway, I found little reason to believe anything more than street vendors and apartment complexes occupied the area I was told held the university’s campus. However, after crossing two very precarious streets and passing through a train depot, I strode through a gap in a chain like fence and into a different world. There, in the heart of everything that made the city a city sat a collection of gothic buildings surrounding several meticulously kept quads and common areas. The fastidious nature of the grounds keeping reflected also in the college’s structures. Each one had been carefully maintained and restored to their original 1841 specifications.

The institution appears to have a strong alumni base. This becomes particularly evident when viewing the newly constructed dorms, all oh which are of a sturdy stone construction and do not in any way hinder the pristine gothic theme of the grounds.

The school offers a formidable array of curriculum options, everything from African American Studies, to Communication and Media Management, and Engineering. The facility even boasts it’s own seismic observatory, a small brick bunker resembling a medieval pillbox.

Overall, Fordham struck me as a delightful repose from the surrounding bustle. With convenient subway locations, transportation to the inner city remains as easy as taking a stroll to the nearby Starbucks. In such a position, the college experience a Fordham prepares the student for not only numerous careers, but also life in a large city setting.

Fifty one strangers, two guides and one gigantic chocolate colored bus made for an unbelievable week in Washington D.C.

I travelled there as a wonderful segment of the Al Neuharth Free Spirit Scholarship, a journalistic scholarship given to one student from each of the 50 states as well as one from the District of Columbia. The winners then travelled to D.C. by plane, train and car for a week long convention running from March 13 to March 18.

The trip provided totally new experiences in more than one sense. As a typically ground bound Montanan, I had flown only twice before in my adult life, and never alone; navigating airports offered a whole new spectrum of challenges and made me grateful for Great Falls’ small building and friendly staff.

The novelty of meeting so many strangers struck me early on, when the delegate from Wyoming approached me on my first layover and introduced himself. As more and more teenagers trickled in to our hotel I began to realize to unique opportunity the scholarship offered us. Unlike travelling with a group of well worn companions, our unit had no pre existing relationships; we sat with a different person every time we got on the bus.

Because we all knew only one or two other people from travel arrangements, most of the long bus rides to and from locations were spent discussing everything from weather in our hometowns to the types of papers, magazines and websites we produced. (That’s a tabloid sheet paper and WordPress website for all of you non-journalism students out there.)

Nonetheless, our guides and hosts expected us to acclimate quickly and bright and early the next morning we took to the road to begin a mind boggling week of interviews, tours and Q and A sessions with reporters, executives and activists aboard a brand new, ligt brown bus nicknamed Chocolate Milk.

All of our events emphasized the need for First Amendment Rights in the 21^st century. One of our first stops, the Newseum, a five story museum devoted entirely to the history of news, confronted our group with a sad fact: less than a third of the people polled could name all five rights, slightly more could name one or two and over half could name all five members of the Simpson’s family.

Every person we spoke to that week had one thing in common to say: protect the right to free speech, to free press, to freedom of religion and the freedoms of petition and assembly. (For anyone not paying attention, those would be the five freedoms that under 30 percent of people could name.)

Even though we eventually traded Chocolate Milk in for Two Percent, we all left with 50 more friends that we brought with us and we took home the drive to make a difference and the determination to be together again someday, motivating others as we were motivated.

Members of the Performance team collaborated with members of Student Council to recruit members of the student body to participate.

Morning announcements helped to advertise the lack of initial participation and English teachers also pitched in to help gather willing seniors.

The scramblers, a familiar scene at pep assemblies, spell out BISON with their bodies in between a random, unchoregraphed dance.

Armed with pitch black costumes and glow stick skeletons, the performance team put on a show in the dark of the old gym. Their dance routine featured fluorescent lightsabers and glowing jewelry, which the team used to create the illusion of rippling movement. The performed to a rave mix created by the team members and left the floor to a healthy round of applause.

Speech and Debate takes time and dedication. Any team member will verify that point, but they believe every  moment is worth the hard work. The team has been slipping into an individual event and every year they attempt to make the bond tighter between all the members. This year, the team is participating in a ‘nerd workshop’ from 9 AM to 5 PM on Jan. 23 in preparation for the State meet. It is will be time to allow ideas to flow, each case and speech to be critiqued to build the best techniques to win state in Bozeman. Many of the seniors are looking forward to the workshop to gain a better grasp on arguments and speaking styles to have an upper hand at state. The debaters will create new ideas against opponent’s cases and the speechies will memorize their speeches and learn best possible gestures to impress the judges. This will be a time for the team to bond in its entirety and show this year’s new coaches what they got.

Of all the necessities that can spoil, gasoline crosses very few minds. The truth: gas, like many of the perishables in our pantries, goes bad. While an excellent, albeit non-eco –friendly weed killer, bad gasoline has no real purpose. If left to stagnate overtime, refined petroleum starts to break down. In sensitive engines, those tuned for performance or with higher compression, the aged fuel ages the performance of the machine.

Ideal targets for this poison are any seasonally used equipment, boats for example. Symptoms of poor fuel quality make their presence known; usually in he form of poor power, excessive smoke, or pinging. The latter of these occurs as the degraded fuel combusts too early; causing not one, but two explosions within the cylinder. Without intervention, this pinging can cause serious engine damage with costs in the thousands of dollars.

In older engines or any other motor fitted with a carburetor, the performance lags more severely. Bad fuel in this equipment causes popping, sputtering, and stalling. Popping refers to a backfire from the carburetor, usually out through the air intake. Such an occurrence will cause the motor to slow or stop completely as the fuel low is interrupted.

If the problem remains un-resolved, its effects spread through the motor. The next victims of the putrid petroleum, the spark plugs, can seriously inhibit the efficiency and functionality of a machine. The improper combustion of the fuel leaves a carbon residue inside the cylinder. The coating soon spreads to the spark plug, effectively coating the tip and armature. The carbon coating on the plugs prevents the correct ignition of the fuel robbing fuel economy and horsepower. These effects remain long after the stale fuel has burned through the engine and usually require the replacement of all of the spark plugs.

All of these ill effects can be easily prevented with the use of a fuel stabilizer. This concentrated liquid mixes evenly into gasoline and prevents its decay. In the case of most vehicles, simply adding the stabilizer to the fuel tank before storage completes the process. In the case of carbureted engines, the substance should be added to not only the tank, but also to the carburetor itself. In either case, once the addictive has been employed, it remains necessary to run the engine. This brings the stabilized gasoline into the fuel system and prevents any erosion from unsterilized petroleum.

In short, the preservation of fuel protects the owner’s investment in equipment. With the current prices of gasoline, protecting these investments and preventing the consequences saves repair costs and allows for trouble free use.