It was Monday night of my senior year Homecoming week. The parade was over, the dinner winding down, and the dance party at the band shell sounded like a fun event to cap off the night with, but I was expecting to see more than a bunch of kids who looked like they had never been enlightened to the fact that there are other things to do at such a function besides making an inappropriate human polypeptide chain. And by polypeptide, I mean grinding. Apparently this was an unsafe expectation, because there was indeed a polypeptide chain- nay, nigh an full protein- consisting of many pelvically excited amino acids, shall we say. The laughably unenthusiastic, pathetically unoriginal, absolutely embarrassing, catastrophically immature, horrific, reviling, degrading, barbarically unrestrained orgy that met my eyes represented the least class of anything I have ever seen at our school, and I could not help but notice that people looked miserable in the act to boot. From what I saw the party population seemed to be a bunch of people with bored looks on their faces, pretending they were dancing and looking around to see if anyone was watching them embarrass themselves. Unfortunately, I was. Please, students, listen to me; I’m going to give you some sound advice: Grow up. Please. At least act like you have danced before, and don’t settle for cheap excuses that are boring anyway. Fast forward to Saturday’s dance. I didn’t see any polypeptide chains here (although there were several human grana, which was slightly discouraging,) and guess what? It was superfun. It was like photosynthesis. The sun of music excited the electrons that were my friends and I in the chlorophyll of the student body in the chloroplast of the gym (ignore the necessity of grana; it’s an illustration,) and we hit up the electron transport chain (danced) and made ATP (fun) for quite some time. Ultimately, we made it through the light-independent (intangible) reactions, producing sugar (friendship) through carbon fixation (bonding.) That’s what a dance should be! With that in mind, here are some tips to enhance your next dance experience: 1. Always think photosynthesis over protein synthesis. 2. Imagine there are resistance bands strapped to your pelvis and you can’t move it more than a few inches in any direction without causing extreme fatigue. 3. Ask yourself (or even better, someone else, such as a chaperon,) "Am I embarrassing myself?" 4. Only participate in dancing if you are capable of sweating profusely; if you are not, try bathing in Restasis, and if this does not work, seek medical attention. 5. Wear sweat-wicking materials to enable a smooth transition back to the outdoors (Follow this one; I overlooked it, to my everlasting shame!) 6. Sing loudly to songs you know, sometimes obnoxiously. 7. Perfect three (3) dance moves you can fall back on when you are not sure what to do. For instance, "Pencil Sharpener," "Lawn Mower," "Raise the Roof," "Dice shaker," etc.