1. Know your teacher. This step cannot be stressed enough. Is your teacher a hawk-eyed dictator who rules their class with an iron fist? If so, you should probably wait to text or at least excuse yourself if you can. Is your teacher a kindly old person with bad eyesight? Get to the back and text, tweet, or surf away! Is your teacher a hip and/or cool person? Depends on the day–make sure you try and contribute positively at some point so that they might let your rule breaking go.

2. Turn your brightness down. Most people forget this step, but turning the brightness on your phone down can make the difference between a teacher thinking you’re not paying attention and a teacher knowing you’re on your cell phone.

3. Take your glasses off. The teacher can probably see what you’re doing in the reflection–take ’em off. Plus, it makes it look like you’re concentrating really hard, trying to ignore the girls gossiping next to you. If you don’t wear glasses, no need to worry about this step.

4. Use good placement. Some teachers won’t be able to see a phone on the desk, but others will. A consistently good place to put your phone is behind a book or laptop so you can quickly pretend to be reading when the teacher looks at you, or when the girls next to you start talking about you. Make sure you don’t use your phone too actively (i.e. spending minutes at a time on it, texting your friends about what the girls are saying about you), since it’ll be easy for the teacher to see you’re up to no good.

5. Use good judgment. Putting a phone in your lap is not only a cliche, but it’s also really noticeable! After all, normal people don’t look at their crotches and smirk or giggle or laugh or sigh when the girls keep talking shit about them–especially when all the normal people really want is to be left alone. But that’s not really what the normal people want. The normal people want other people to talk to them and see if they’re alright! The normal people might start to wonder why they are cast as the bad guy in the entire situation!? How come everyone takes her side? Am I a bad person? Do I miss her (answer: no)? Why am I sad? God I’m sad.

6. Important things to remember. Your friends are always there for you, there are probably a lot of people who feel sorry for you. If you hear her laughing after you’ve been mentioned, don’t say anything. It’ll only end badly for you. If one of her friends feels sorry for you, don’t try to drunkenly hit on her, especially if you’re friends with her boyfriend and you’ve helped them out, you know, as a couple. This also can only end badly for you. Try not to alienate too many people or burn too many bridges on your downward spiral from cloud nine to rock bottom. Turn the sound on your phone off! It’s a dead giveaway that you’re on your phone when your textbook starts beeping at you!

Enjoy!