Addicted to coffee? At Pascack Hills High School, you are not alone. Every morning, lunch, and night, many students, teachers, and faculty can be found with a cup of coffee in their hands. In fact, over half of the students at Hills consume coffee as part of their daily schedule.

Caffeine is a mood altering stimulant which is mostly consumed as coffee. It makes one feel more awake, but can also make you jittery, depending on your tolerance of caffeine.

English teacher Shawn McDonald is truly addicted to coffee. McDonald takes her coffee with milk and sugar “because it tastes really good, and, if I don’t, I will have a headache.” McDonald drinks “one cup of coffee in the morning when I wake up in a mug, one in a travel cup on the way to school, a large coffee mid morning, then a large coffee in the afternoon after lunch, and then one cup in a mug at night.”

When asked if she knew that four cups of coffee contain 400 milligrams of caffeine, which is considered an unsafe amount for adults, McDonald said, “No and it won’t change anything.”

Alike to McDonald, English teacher Alexandra Pfleging drinks three cups of coffee in the morning, all before stepping foot into Pascack Hills.

Although coffee has an appealing taste to others, freshmen Chrissy Michelis disagrees with McDonald and Pfleging and would prefer not to drink it. Michelis isn’t alone in her opinion of not liking coffee well other freshmen such as Rachel Blume and Molly Keyhoe who drink slim to no coffee and take their cup with lots of milk and pounds of sugar.

Junior Harrison Scott, who takes his cup o’joe black, only drinks coffee when he needs to stay up late for a test. Scott says, “late at night when I feel like I need to go to bed but I have a lot of work to do, I’ll drink a cup of coffee in order to be able to finish my work.”