If someone were to take a tour of my work space at home, they would see my binders and books scattered haphazardly on the table, with a thin coating of scratch paper layered across the room like a sheet of new snow. The sign on the door leading to this messy habitat is labeled “Do not disturb,” but I’m considering changing it to “Caution: slippery surface” for the sake of my family’s safety.

For me, being disorganized is a recently acquired trait. Before quarantine, I was praised as the kind of girl who arranged all her colored pencils in rainbow order, kept her notes ordered chronologically and never lost a water bottle in kindergarten. During quarantine, however, I developed the habit of randomly scattering my schoolwork on every available surface: whether it be my desk, my bedroom floor or the top of my kitchen’s microwave. 

Unfortunately, now that I am back in-person, this is no longer a viable option. Scooting 10 feet from the kitchen to the living room to find misplaced things is easy, but taking a 1,000-foot hike across campus isn’t. 

Let’s say I have a chemistry worksheet and I don’t know where to put it. Last year, I might’ve plopped it onto the ground where I stood and prayed that it wouldn’t be sucked up by my household’s ravenous roomba. But at school, I am now forced to carefully tuck it into my yellow binder.

Despite my renewed efforts to keep track of my stuff, I still lose items frequently, especially due to my goldfish memory. Did I leave my jacket in period 3 or period 5? Did I lose my folder in period 4 or period 6? For someone with a reputation of being neat and organized, I was horrified to realize that losing a pencil began to sound like a typical Tuesday.

But my habit isn’t limited to only losing small things like my pencil. My math teacher, Mr. Yim, instructs his students to put their phones into this dark blue calculator pocket chart at the start of every class. It has 36 pockets perfectly sized to contain small, stunted iPhones and separate these precious babies from their doting, addicted owners. At the end of class, we retrieve our phones.

In theory, we teenagers would never leave our beloved held hostage in an inhumane pouch designed for scientific calculators, right?

Wrong. 

One day, I completely forgot as I stumbled away from the classroom with equations swirling in my head. It was only after school ended that I realized my phone was missing. After pawing through my disorganized backpack like a crazed animal, I retraced my path across the entire school in a panicked rush and came to Mr. Yim’s locked classroom door. I was able to get my phone back soon after, but I hated running across campus to look for my phone. Blue Day P.E. is already enough exercise to make me feel blue.

The same week, tragedy struck again when I lost my lucky pencil. This pencil is a high quality white a-gel that has carried me through numerous tests since 7th grade. Whether it’s the added confidence boost that I got from the placebo effect or genuine mystical properties, I always seemed to score higher whenever I used it. 

When I lost the pencil, it was already at a ripe old age. The squishy silicone grip, which came as a snowy white color, became what my friends call “crusty yellow,” but I prefer to think of it as an elegant French vanilla.

In the frenzied rush of packing my things during some Red Day class, I lost the pencil. For all I know, it could be circulating through the grubby hands of COVID-infected students unworthy of its magic. 

I would like to take a moment to honor my pencil for its faithful years of service and wonder about my questionable performance on PSAT without its moral (and squishy grip) support.

Did my losing streak stop there? No. I capped off this delightful week by losing my library-borrowed copy of “Lord of the Flies.”

Oops. Guess I can’t do the English homework now.

I recall using the book during a Friday lesson to look for symbols in the novel, but when I needed it to do homework the following Monday, it was missing. I could’ve lost it at any point at school or over the weekend. 

I devised a grand search and rescue plan. The brilliant first step: to look in my backpack. However, I underestimated the difficulty of this task. 

Since I have a roller backpack, I’m thankful that I won’t have back problems at age 80. On the flip side, this means that I have a habit of dumping objects into my backpack thoughtlessly, because I don’t need to worry about whether the added weight will give me scoliosis. 

During my search, I dug through the pockets and folds and discovered a whole new world like Columbus exploring the Americas for the first time. After all, the darkness in humanity described in “Lord of the Flies” pales in comparison to the black hole known as “my backpack.” Notorious for tripping unsuspecting students in the halls, my backpack had plenty of trash to spew and ways to delay the search process.

There’s an old Cheetos bag and — and oh, look! It’s the homework assignment that I couldn’t find two months ago!

Even after taking everything out and thoroughly cleaning my backpack, I didn’t find the book. I spent an hour looking through my entire house and then asked around at school the next day. Nothing worked. “Lord of the Flies” probably remains buried under some avalanche of papers at home.

The moral of the story? I need to stay organized and sharpen my memory in order to keep track of my things. Have I accomplished this yet? No.

I’ve decided that being organized is my new goal for this holiday season, so cheers to Googling replacement book prices and hoping I don’t accidentally flush my Kindle down the toilet next.