10. Study APUSH in the garden. Sodium-rich tears of defeat from reading 40 text-heavy pages can help your vegetation flourish.

9. Introduce the rare YouTube animal. Every ecosystem needs a top-of-the-food-chain (time) consumer.

8. Start up a compost pile. It’s good fertilizer, and you could then tell your teacher, “My compost pile ate my homework.”

7. Get a herd of zebras, a couple of lions, maybe a cheetah … Oh, what? Your backyard isn’t the size of the Serengeti? Whoops.

6. Obtain a bathroom pass. By now, those flip-flops must be infested by a diversity of microorganisms to add to your ecosystem.

5. Dispose of lead sulfate from your chem lab. Plants love those heavy metals so much they turn yellow.

4. Jumpstart your microcosm with your APES bio bottle. The animals definitely survived three weeks of torture in a sealed plastic enclosure.

3. Forget your water bottle outside. Who wouldn’t want a pristine biome of soon-to-be blood-sucking mosquitoes to brag about?

2. Feed your animals a lot of cafeteria food. Preservatives keep food healthy, so they should keep your ecosystem healthy too.

1. Plant some tomato plants. Where’s better to put all those tomatoes you were supposed to eat for lunch?