by Caitlin Glenn | Staff Writer

Cell phones are a modern marvel that people often fail to take advantage of, especially when they’re getting swept up in the hectic schedule of their day to day life. It’s easy to forget that there are useful functions available to your phones beyond an excited emoji, a selfie at Starbucks, and that super intense game of Candy Crush that you’ve had going since last month. Your phone can also be used to help you get through the so-called ‘best years of your life’ as long as you know how to use it. So post your last picture and take a break from the latest posts on Twitter and check out these five useful apps to use in school.

1. SAT Question of the Day- It’s quick, it’s easy, and you’ll be learning while you do it. No one likes to do more work than they have to, and that can be a bit of an issue when you can’t take a breath without someone telling you how important your SAT scores are. This app will keep your brain fighting fit, and will only take two minutes out of your day.

2. Khan Academy- Some teachers are impossible to understand; it doesn’t reflect their intelligence or your ability to learn, but the fact is that all of us at some point will have a teacher (or seven) with whom you are never on the same page with. Enter Khan Academy; this app will give you easy access to both a visual and auditory explanation of all that material that you kind of/sort of/definitely didn’t get in class.

3. Wardrobe- Nothing eats away at a girl’s time like trying to pick out your outfit for the next day. For a girl, deciding between two shirts is the equivalent of choosing between two fighting friends- it shouldn’t have to be done and yet it happens on a daily basis, sometimes twice. This app essentially allows you to store your closet on your phone and pull together outfits wherever you might be. You might still have to spend some time actually trying the outfit on, but at the very least you can narrow it down to a choice few and subtracts two hours from your routine.

4. Dictionary.com- There are always going to be words that you don’t know, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Not trying to learn those words, however, is. This app not only gives you the definition of words, it also gives you synonyms, pronunciations, and example sentences. You can impress your friends with your elevated vocabulary while also preparing yourself for the SAT and your English class.

5. Sparknotes- The taboo that teachers place on Sparknotes may be exaggerated, but let’s get one thing straight: Sparknotes is not a substitute for actually reading your book. Rather, it’s a tool to help you to clarify the text you’re reading and remind you of some of the plot points or characterizations that you might have forgotten. There’s nothing wrong with not understanding that Shakespearean soliloquy or getting lost in a book that was written before literature was allowed to be straightforward. This app offers both accessibility and clarity, and if used properly it might even boost your grade a few points.

Instead of turning to your phone to tweet your despair over school, take a pause and use your phone for something more productive. You know you can always depend on it, and if you’re careful you can turn your little box of distractions into a great circuit for success.