From water bottles without dents to hoodies that seem to increase your test scores, students implement many different “lucky charms” into their lives. What are some of these habits that students use and how do they appear to affect their luck?

Senior Aadhya Bhatia has been eating almonds every morning before school her entire life.

“[Eating almonds] is a lucky ritual that I have,” Bhatia said. “Every morning before school, my mom has these soaked almonds in water and the skin of the almonds comes off, so we always have soaked almonds before school to get our brains ready.”

Bhatia said although she does this every day, it has not affected her performance.

“I don’t think [eating almonds before school] makes a difference that much,” Bhatia said. “It’s a big belief for my mom. She used to not let me leave the house without having soaked almonds but personally, I don’t think it has affected my performance at all.”

Although she doesn’t think that eating almonds makes her smarter, Bhatia said skipping the habit may have once affected her performance.

“I remember this one time I had a test, and I didn’t have almonds beforehand,” Bhatia said. “I did not do well on that test. My mom, to this day, says that [not doing well on the test] was because of the fact that I didn’t eat almonds. I don’t think it was because of that, but you never know.”

Bhatia said she has felt the need to make this a habit because of her parents.

“[The habit of eating almonds] is engrained from my parents because they also had almonds when they were little kids, and their parents used to give them almonds before school,” Bhatia said. “I think it’s common in India though because a lot of people believe that almonds have a lot of health benefits like improving your brain, improving your hair, improving your skin; almonds are actually used in a lot of different medicinal things. My day doesn’t feel complete if I don’t eat my almonds in the morning, and I learned that the hard way.”

Bhatia said others should “try out” this habit. 

“I would be pretty interested to see if people actually saw a difference in their academics by eating almonds in the morning. I would recommend it,” Bhatia said. 

Bhatia also said she would consider herself to be a superstitious person, but not specifically with her habit of eating almonds.

“There are other superstitions I have; I have to eat something before a big test, and I can’t just go without breakfast,” Bhatia said. “I would consider myself a superstitious person, but I don’t think almonds are one of those superstitious beliefs.” 

Senior Isabelle Vansyckle said that she is not very superstitious until it comes to theater activities.

“I get very in my head about a lot of things. I don’t know if it’s because I get nervous about performing. I have been doing it for so long and it’s like, ‘this is how we do shows and this is how we don’t do shows’ when we’re backstage,” Vansyckle said. “I would prefer a routine.”

Vansyckle said that her superstition is a Red Rat prop and very specific to the school. 

“We have this painting up there [backstage of the Little Theater] and every single time it gets touched, something really bad happens,” Vansyckle said. “It [Red Rat] was touched the day before the world shut down with COVID and that’s just one wild situation.”

Vansyckle also said that this prop has affected her performance.

“I think there was one night when it [Red Rat] was touched, and I sprained my ankle opening night and had to do the rest of the shows on a sprained ankle,” Vansyckle said. “The queen died on one of the days the Red Rat was touched.”

Vansyckle also said that the prop came from a musical done a few years ago.

“The Red Rat came from Jaclyn Hyde, which I think was done in 2018 or 2019 here so that’s where that prop is from,” Vansyckle said. “It’s been super unlucky since then.”