There are dozens of school supplies that are debatably essential for back to school, a fraction of them are somewhat reasonable, a smaller fraction of that fraction being truly…iconic. Here are those items: 

One of the most necessary items for back to school has to be the stapler. Once your stapler shows up at your table, you will immediately ascend to the status of an omnipotent god. Peasants all across the countryside will kneel before you, begging and pleading for their use of the staplers to avoid the ludicrous long lines of the class stapler. You will feel like the most important person in the world. 

Another important item would, of course, be notebooks. You buy these trendy and convenient Japanese notebooks and gently caress the paper in admiration of its high quality. Rubbing the paper will become a part of your daily routine. There are no words that express the euphoria you will experience from these notebooks. Every night you would dream of showing up to the classroom with your brand new notebooks smugly…Until you learn that your teachers will only be accepting assignments in composition or spiral notebooks.

I strongly believe that using deodorant should become a major part of the Irvington High School’s dress code. You walk into the cafeteria, trying to convince yourself the food is digestible.. You inhale, ready to intake the totally aromatic scents of the delicacies. Suddenly, your endeavors are interrupted by the whiff of the football player by you who was too ‘busy’ to shower.. You faint from the excessive shock and pain you experienced from such horror. What could prevent such disastrous events? Deodorant.

Getting a new water bottle is one of the most important tasks that anyone can ever accomplish. Your water intake determines how much you’re worth as a human being. You must make sure to never die from something foolish such as dehydration, or else the day of your funeral none of your family members or friends will show up. They will be forever ashamed of ever knowing you. To prevent public humiliation, large quantities of water must be consumed every day for the sake of your own good. 

In order to keep organized and be neater in the new school year, buying 37 different colored pastel highlighters is the way to go. Sure, they may be somewhat useless because they all slightly look the same with little variation, but they are very cool. Although your parents may feel very disappointed in you (probably not the first time they felt this way) for spending so much money on highlighters, that’s simply nothing to be concerned about. They won’t understand the trendiness and the absolute necessity to flaunt around your $200 highlighters to everyone.

Likewise, to prove your ambitions in maintaining cleanliness and good organization habits, it is important that you purchase a planner to go along with your highlighters. Of course, not in the way of using highlighters in the cheap planner–because it will bleed. Unlike the highlighters which actively occupy a large portion of your pencil pouch space, your planner won’t be safely kept in a designated shelter. The planner will get destroyed in your backpack, its flimsy body stands no chance against the sturdy textbooks. The planner will long be forgotten at the pits of the backpack, 

Post-it notes are a great way to cause trauma for your future self. Imagine you find a post-it note with the words “Arson 8:00” written on it with no other context at all. It is in your handwriting, only you go in your room, but this post-it note doesn’t seem familiar at all. You will start to doubt your sanity as you find more and more of these yellow little bastards in every nook and cranny of your room.

Compared to all the items listed above, a box of masks inarguably remains the most important. With the sudden shift from virtual learning to in-person learning, it is essential that students take all the necessary precautions to protect themselves and others from the COVID-19 pandemic. Contrary to aesthetically pleasing school and office supplies, the mask is sturdy, stylish, and will be your best friend throughout this pandemic. It will protect you and convince you that if you’re going to die, at least don’t die from something preventable and stupid.