I went on a field trip yesterday. I can probably count on one hand the number of field trips I have left in my school career, next year's ASPA conference being one and the annual Science Club trip to Six Flags being another, so Senior Year is once again twisting one arm behind my back and forcing me to wave goodbye half-heartedly with the other arm as I leave another of my childhood institutions in the dust.

Anyway, having braved many a field trip in my thirteen-year career, I offer some advice to the would-be field trippers that will follow in my footsteps at basketball games and basket weaving workshops across this great land. (Okay, I promise to stop talking like the brochure at Ellis Island if you promise to have fun on your next field trip.)

Whoever said getting there was half the fun has obviously been on a field trip or two in his lifetime. Whether you are savoring the off-key karaoke from Disney features past and present or wondering at what angle, exactly, they held the lighter to get the seat in front of you to burn like that, there is always something to do on the bus. And if you are really hard-pressed for entertainment, you can always annoy the teacher or the bus driver with a resounding chorus of �Are we there yet?�s, �Bobby kicked me�s and �Sarah doesn�t look so good�s until you are threatened with detentions, told to shut up or someone hands you a brown paper bag to give to Sarah.

The educational content of a field trip being inversely proportional to student interest, the more inventive (read: mischievous) among us have always risen to the challenge and made their own fun. The true litmus test for a great field trip story is the degree of involvement of local, state and national law enforcement agencies.

In middle school (before I lived in Alabama, so don't think you'll remember this too, because none of you were there), two busloads of sixth graders were gripped with fear and anticipation when a chaperone discovered that we - wait for it - had left some students behind. Someone whispered something about the students threatening to jump off the bridge and into the raging Mississippi, and then it was on. Rumors were flying left and right, and by the time school ended that day the entire student body was abuzz with fanciful tales of the field trip runaways and their exploits. This led to the anticlimactic arrival of the motorcade, students and parents in tow, and the fairly disappointing news that someone had forgotten to check the restrooms before we got back on the bus.

We'll forget about the Jolly Rancher incident in a museum bathroom for now and consider that sometimes a field trip involves a performance of some kind (usually not involving any bodily fluids). If you are part of a choral group, remember Mr. Clark's rules of singing, as reviewed in every practice every week for four years, and on the way to the hockey game where we were to sing the National Anthem. Project, enunciate, smile. Rock and roll. And when you find your seat after the 'performance', throw peanuts at unsuspecting sports fans with reckless abandon until one of them finally complains to your parents or the nearest school official.

In more recent history, a high school senior picked a fight with a poor, defenseless eight-grader because the two of them didn't see eye-to-eye on how to put together a student broadcast. While the senior�s Springer mentality is indicative of the tabloid journalism we see every night on the news, it starts to turn into a Very Special Episode of 7th Heaven when you�re whaling on middle school kids who don�t know any better. Also remember that any punishments issued during a field trip tend to carry roughly twice the punishment of a similar offense committed at school, so if you're going to bust someone in the face, doing so during a roundtable discussion with all kinds of witnesses is probably ill-advised.

Resist with all your might the urge to form a single-file line. How are you supposed to look at the person you're talking to or the person you're listening to when they are standing in front of or behind you, or three to four people behind you. Plus, a single-file line respects the rights of other people who have chosen of their own free will to visit the replica castle with the weird little man who cut the grass in exchange for room and board with the castle company on their day off to share a common sidewalk with the unruly masses of sticky-fingered, ill-mannered future criminals. A single-file line is never the best way to herd students through museums, prairie parks, or Indian ruins, but it seemed to work pretty well in fifth grade when we walked to McDonald's.

If you are a teacher, you have probably been somewhere in the vicinity of mildly annoyed or vaguely disinterested throughout these tips for students. If you thought you were going to get away without a few notes yourself, you were wrong. Know that field trips are never very exciting in and of themselves. The magic of the field trip is in the getting away from school. No matter that the field trip is to the box factory or the 'hair styling and beautifying academy,' if the cheese wagon's destination doesn't end in the word �school,� the kids will melt like three-day-old government cheese and cater to your every whim for the better part of a day. Work with that. And take them out for fast food on the way back to school. You'll be glad you did.