How to Fold a Fitted Sheet

1. Find a bed, table or sofa on which to work. Fold the sheet in half with the top meeting the bottom (foot) of the sheet.
2. Tuck the top corner into the bottom corresponding corner (left top corner to left bottom corner and right top corner to bottom right corner.) Top corners will be turned inside out.
3. Fold the sheet in half again so all corners meet. Again tuck the corners into each other. This will again force one set of corners to be turned inside out.
4. This last step leaves you with a bunched up corner area. To smooth it down, fold in the longest side so the corner can lie flat (it will be at a slight angle.). The short side can also be folded in .
5. Fold the sheet again in half the long way. This should then cover the folded area from step 4.
6. Note that you should now have a long "strip" that can be folded in 1/4's or 1/3's depending on how small you want the folded product to end up.

How to Survive High School Without a Best Friend

1. Get some perspective. High school is not the be-all, end-all. Just because you were unpopular in high-school doesn't mean you'll be unpopular your whole entire life. Some of the most famous and wealthy people were high school rejects. Things change and high school doesn't last forever. The most important thing is to get through high school so you can enter the next phase in your life.
2. Identify the things you feel you miss or lack by not having a best friend and brainstorm how you can fill those "holes" in other, positive ways. For example, if you hate being alone on Saturday nights, find a regular activity to do at that time.
3. Don't put yourself down by negatively comparing yourself to other people. No one is perfect. Everyone has problems, some people are just better at hiding them. Ms. Popularity might have things ten times worse than you.
4. Be thankful for what you do have. You still have your health, your personality, your family, your talents, your interests, etc.
5. Challenge yourself by trying something new that you've always wanted to do -- maybe it's joining the drama club or learning how to ride a horse or taking Japanese lessons at the community college. It may sound corny, but being a "best friend" to yourself is important. Sometimes, people with a lot of "best friends" actually aren't very happy or comfortable with themselves.
6. Be your own best friend. Focus on the positive things about yourself. Stand up for yourself. Don't be hard on yourself for not having a "best friend." Think of the things that people like about you. Write them down and remind yourself, as needed.
7. Don't judge people based on the surface. Don't dismiss other types of people who may seem more popular than you as not being able to "get" you. They might be able to understand more than you think.
8. Join a club. You may meet new friends; you may not. The important thing is to have something else to focus on to make school tolerable.
9. Develop interests outside of school. Take music or dance lessons. Volunteer. Go to the library or movies. Act or create sets for a local theater production. Get a weekend or after school job.
10. Don't lose hope. Acknowledge that not having a best friend in high school may make you feel sad or lonely at times. That's okay, because having friends causes heartaches a lot of the time, too.
11. Develop a stronger relationship with your parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. They're older and have more experience, therefore, they have a lot of advice to give.
12. Use your teachers as mentors.
13. Be a good example to the people who are your classmates, friends or acquaintances or someone who could use support, such as a transfer student. Having many positives connections can really add up.
14. Talk to someone about your problems. Venting is therapeutic. Find someone you can trust like an older sibling, a parent, family member, a clergy member or a professional therapist.
15. Hang out with people who aren't in your grade or who go to another school. Go on Facebook and randomly "poke" people near you or get a MySpace and make new friends there.
16. Focus on your schoolwork, getting into college and getting a job.
17. Be open and patient. Don't "commit" yourself to not having a close friend in high school. Quality friendships can take time.
18. Having a best friend doesn't mean everything. Sure, people who do sometimes have more people to depend on, but maybe one day you'll have a really good best friend who actually understands you.

How to Survive High School Without a Best Friend

1. Get some perspective. High school is not the be-all, end-all. Just because you were unpopular in high-school doesn't mean you'll be unpopular your whole entire life. Some of the most famous and wealthy people were high school rejects. Things change and high school doesn't last forever. The most important thing is to get through high school so you can enter the next phase in your life.
2. Identify the things you feel you miss or lack by not having a best friend and brainstorm how you can fill those "holes" in other, positive ways. For example, if you hate being alone on Saturday nights, find a regular activity to do at that time.
3. Don't put yourself down by negatively comparing yourself to other people. No one is perfect. Everyone has problems, some people are just better at hiding them. Ms. Popularity might have things ten times worse than you.
4. Be thankful for what you do have. You still have your health, your personality, your family, your talents, your interests, etc.
5. Challenge yourself by trying something new that you've always wanted to do -- maybe it's joining the drama club or learning how to ride a horse or taking Japanese lessons at the community college. It may sound corny, but being a "best friend" to yourself is important. Sometimes, people with a lot of "best friends" actually aren't very happy or comfortable with themselves.
6. Be your own best friend. Focus on the positive things about yourself. Stand up for yourself. Don't be hard on yourself for not having a "best friend." Think of the things that people like about you. Write them down and remind yourself, as needed.
7. Don't judge people based on the surface. Don't dismiss other types of people who may seem more popular than you as not being able to "get" you. They might be able to understand more than you think.
8. Join a club. You may meet new friends; you may not. The important thing is to have something else to focus on to make school tolerable.
9. Develop interests outside of school. Take music or dance lessons. Volunteer. Go to the library or movies. Act or create sets for a local theater production. Get a weekend or after school job.
10. Don't lose hope. Acknowledge that not having a best friend in high school may make you feel sad or lonely at times. That's okay, because having friends causes heartaches a lot of the time, too.
11. Develop a stronger relationship with your parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. They're older and have more experience, therefore, they have a lot of advice to give.
12. Use your teachers as mentors.
13. Be a good example to the people who are your classmates, friends or acquaintances or someone who could use support, such as a transfer student. Having many positives connections can really add up.
14. Talk to someone about your problems. Venting is therapeutic. Find someone you can trust like an older sibling, a parent, family member, a clergy member or a professional therapist.
15. Hang out with people who aren't in your grade or who go to another school. Go on Facebook and randomly "poke" people near you or get a MySpace and make new friends there.
16. Focus on your schoolwork, getting into college and getting a job.
17. Be open and patient. Don't "commit" yourself to not having a close friend in high school. Quality friendships can take time.
18. Having a best friend doesn't mean everything. Sure, people who do sometimes have more people to depend on, but maybe one day you'll have a really good best friend who actually understands you.

How to Build a Memory Palace

At the World Memory Championships, top competitors memorize the order of 20 shuffled decks of cards in an hour and more than 500 random digits in 15 minutes, among other events. Think you have what it takes? Believe it or not, almost everybody has the capability to perform such amazing feats. Competitive memorizers don’t necessarily have “better memories" than the rest of us; instead, they learn and perfect a variety of mnemonics (memory aids) to improve their ability to quickly learn and recall just about anything. One of the most useful and widely used mnemonics is the memory palace, a place or series of places in your mind where you can store information that you need to remember. With time and practice, anyone can build a memory palace, and they are useful for far more than just memory competitions and trivia. Here’s how to build your own:

1. Decide on a blueprint for your palace. While a memory palace can be a purely imagined place, it is easier to base it upon a place that exists in the real world and that you are familiar with. A basic palace could be your bedroom, for example. Larger memory palaces can be based on your house, a cathedral, a walk to the corner store, or your whole town. The larger or more detailed the real place, the more information you can store in the corresponding mental space.
2. Define a route. If you will need to remember things in a certain order, it is essential that you follow a specific route through your palace, both in the real world and in your mind. Thus, once you’ve decided what your memory palace is, decide how you will travel through it. If you don’t really need to remember things in order, this step is unnecessary, but still useful, as it makes memorizing your palace easier.
3. Identify specific storage locations in your palace or along your route. When you use your memory palace you will put individual things to be remembered (a number, a name, or a part of a speech that you will be giving, for example), in specific locations. Thus, you need to identify as many locations as you think you will need. Walk through your structure or along your route and really observe it. If your palace is actually a route, such as your drive to work, the storage locations can be landmarks along the way: your neighbor’s house, a crossroads, a statue, or a skyscraper, for example. If the palace is a structure, you can put things in the different rooms. Within rooms, you can identify smaller locations, such as paintings, pieces of furniture, and so on. The key is to make sure the locations you choose are distinct from each other so that no location can be mistaken for another.
4. Memorize your memory palace. For your memory palace to be effective, you need to commit it to memory perfectly. The best way to do this is to actually draw out a blueprint (or a map, if the palace is a route) which shows the landmarks or storage locations you have chosen. Try visualizing the palace when you are not there, and then check your mental image against the map to make sure you have remembered every location and put them in the correct order. Picture the landmarks in as much detail as possible: make sure your mental image includes their colors, sizes, smells, and any other defining characteristics.
5. Place things to be remembered in your palace. Once you have constructed your palace and have it firmly implanted in your mind, you are ready to use it. Put a manageable amount of information in each place. For example, if your palace is your house, and you are trying to remember a speech, you might place the first few sentences on your doormat and the next few in the keyhole of your door. Don’t put too much information in any one place, and if certain things must be kept separate from others, put them in different places. Make sure that you place things along your route in the order in which you need to remember them, if applicable.
6. Use symbols. You don’t necessarily need to put a whole string of words or numbers in a given location in order to be able to remember it, and trying to do so can be unwieldy and counterproductive. Generally, all you need to store in each location is something that will jog your memory, something that will lead you to the actual idea you’re trying to remember. Thus, if you are trying to remember a ship, picture an anchor on your couch. If the ship is the U.S.S. Wisconsin, picture the anchor made out of cheese. Symbols are shorthand and make memories more manageable, but they also can be more effective than picturing the actual thing you are trying to remember.
7. Be creative. The images you put in your palace should, obviously, be as memorable as possible. Generally, images will be more memorable if they are absurd (out of the ordinary)[see warnings] , or if they are attached to some strong emotion or personal experience. The number 124 is not particularly memorable, but an image of a spear shaped like the number 1, going through a swan (which looks like the number 2), and splitting the swan into 4 pieces is. Yes, it’s disturbing, but that’s part of what makes it stick in your mind.
8. Stock your palace with other mnemonics. There are many simpler mnemonics that you can use in combination with the memory palace. As an example, suppose you need to remember a great deal about music composition. As you enter your kitchen, you could see a little boy eating a piece of chocolate fudge, which would evoke the first-letter mnemonic “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge," which would in turn allow you to recall the order of notes on the lines in treble clef (EGBDF).
9. Explore your palace. Once you have stocked your palace with evocative images, you need to go through it and look at them. The more you explore your palace, the more easily you will recall its contents on demand. In your mind you want to see James Joyce, for example, sitting on your toilet as if he belonged there and was really an integral part of your bathroom decor.
10. Use your palace. Once you have memorized the contents of your palace you can recall them simply by mentally walking through it or looking around it. If you need to give a speech, just follow your route in order as you do so. If you need to remember that your girlfriend’s birthday is March 16, simply go into your bedroom and see the soldiers “marching" on the bed to the tune of the 80s cult classic “Sixteen Candles." With practice you will be able to start anywhere in your palace or along your route to recall a specific piece of information.
11. Build new palaces. A memory palace can be reused over and over again if you need only commit things to memory for a short time. Just replace the existing contents with new ones, and you’ll soon remember only the new ones. If you need to remember the contents of your palace for a long time, you can keep that palace as it is and create new ones in which to store other information as needed. If your house contains the phone numbers of everyone you know, you can walk to your workplace if you need to remember the order of a deck of cards.