Gather all the Twilight books you can, and read them over and over. Becoming a professional at the series is mandatory for a vampire’s success in life. It doesn’t matter if you want to be vegetarian or not, because this helps you out with both.

Start working out in the gym, so that you can build up the muscle needed to become a vampire. When you can lift cars, you know you’re doing it right. Remember, Twinkies are NOT a good idea to get yourself in the vampire area of life, so I suggest you avoid these whenever possible. Stick with meat.

Pour glitter all over yourself. You have to sparkle just like a vampire, otherwise you aren’t a true one. Glitter will help you sparkle in the sunlight. Remember, shimmer powder or cream is no alternative to a nice pack of silver body glitter!

Try to stay indoors as much as possible, for you must remain pale in order to pass off as a true vampire. Tan vampires are nonexistent, and staying away from the sun is an easy solution to get that haunted appearance.

Get colored contacts—whether they’re red or gold, you decide. It depends on what kind of vampire you wish to become, so choose accordingly. Don’t have vision bad enough for contacts? Stare at the computer screen for hours on end, and you’ll be fine.

Buy some really nice breath mints, because as you know, vampires’ breath smells heavenly. There is no such thing as “morning breath”, and you can’t forget to brush your teeth. If your breath smells horrible, who’s going to take you as a serious vampire?

Get some major plastic surgery, because vampires are unbelievably beautiful. Normal humans are not as attractive, and a surgery will definitely be in order to achieve vampire-status. Don’t worry, it’ll pay off in the end.

Open-water scares all the daylights out of me—no joke. Just thinking about how deep and dark and dangerous water can be makes me shiver, which is why I’ll probably never get a job as a marine biologist. This is also why I can never bring myself to watch movies about ships, such as Titanic and Poseidon, as well as Jaws.

Space is near the same as open-water. Just thinking about something so big and dangerous make me feel very shaky. I do, however, enjoy books and stories about space. I do not fancy going in the big black puddle myself, though. Living on the moon? I’ll pass, thanks.

Ms. Metcalf, my reading teacher, scares me the most of all things. Probably because getting on her bad side is something that could very easily happen, whereas going into space is not. Ms. Metcalf scares me because she has a very dark side, and can be very unfair when it comes to things like presentations and projects. She also chooses favorites, and makes it very obvious. You can pick and tell who she doesn’t like and also who she absolutely adores. There is no “middle-ground” with her.