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High school honors can mean a lot of different things. Sometimes it refers to honors courses in your school. Other times it refers to specific honors societies that you can join, like the National Honor Society.

Most high schools offer classes at three different levels: standard, honors, and AP. Standard will set you up with the basics, and AP is clearly connected to the AP exam—but what exactly does it mean when a class is honors level? And are honors classes connected to the various academic honors societies?

If you are having trouble figuring out which is the right fit for you, or deciding which one would do more for your college application, or trying to make sense of the many honors organizations out there, read on for our explanation.

How exactly do you take a document that's as complicated as your transcript and shrink it all down to a single number? If you're wondering how to use the final grades you've gotten in high school to determine your GPA, then you've come to the right place. This article will show you how to make this calculation, step by step. But first, what exactly is a GPA?

Because final class grades in high school are usually given as either letters (A-, B+, etc.) or percents (87, 92, etc.), you might be a little stuck on how to convert these marks into the decimals that are used to calculate your GPA. No worries—this article is here to help! Keep reading to see how to translate all your grades into GPA-ready numbers.

Are you looking for an easy way to understand just how your final class grades become GPA decimals? If so, then you've come to the right article. In just two simple charts, I'll show you how this conversion works for both a weighted and unweighted GPA.

In most books and movies, the "other woman"—the woman having an affair with a married man—is often painted as a villain. But what about in The Great Gatsby, a novel in which both married women (Myrtle Wilson and Daisy Buchanan) are having affairs? Especially given that one (Daisy) ends up killing the other (Myrtle), is Myrtle just a one-note "other woman," or is there more to her?

Myrtle's role in the story isn't as large as Daisy's, Gatsby's, or Tom's. However, she is crucial to the plot of the story, and especially to its tragic conclusion. Find out more about Myrtle's role in Gatsby in this guide!

In The Great Gatsby, in the middle of a strange, gray landscape, hovers a giant billboard of eyes without a face—the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. It's a creepy image, and the fact that several characters seem disturbed by it means that it is very significant in the novel. But did you know that F. Scott Fitzgerald didn't make up this advertisement? If you image search "oculist shop sign," you'll see that this disembodied eyes thing was a pretty standard way to advertise places that sold glasses!

So how does The Great Gatsby transform what would have a reasonable everyday image into a sign of the macabre? And why does this billboard affect the characters who see them so much? In this article, I'll talk about the places where the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg are mentioned in the novel, explain their symbolic meaning, connect them with the novel's themes and characters, and also give you some jumping-off points for writing essays.

Love, desire, and sex are a major motivators for nearly every character in The Great Gatsby. However, none of Gatsby's five major relationships is depicted as healthy or stable.

So what can we make of this? Is Fitzgerald arguing that love itself is unstable, or is it just that experiencing love and desire the way the characters do is problematic?

Gatsby's portrayal of love and desire is complex. So we will explore and analyze each of Gatsby's five major relationships: Daisy/Tom, George/Myrtle, Gatsby/Daisy, Tom/Myrtle, and Jordan/Nick. We will also note how each relationship develops through the story, the power dynamics involved, and what each particular relationship seems to say about Fitzgerald's depiction of love.

We will also include analysis of important quotes for each of the five major couples. Finally, we will go over some common essay questions about love, desire, and relationships to help you with class assignments.

Keep reading for the ultimate guide to love in the time of Gatsby!

When you think about The Great Gatsby's major characters, George Wilson is often the last to come to mind. Compared to his voluptuous wife, Myrtle, Tom, Daisy, Jordan, and, of course, the titular Gatsby himself, pale-faced, shrinking, passive George can almost escape your memory—and perhaps he entirely would if he didn't turn out to be one of the novel's most crucial characters.

George has the least "page time" of the seven major characters, but is important because of the crucial role he plays in the novel's conclusion. Because of this, we don't know quite as much about George's personality, motivations, or characteristics as we do about other characters.

This guide goes over what we do know about George and explains why he is so important. Read on to learn more about the man underneath the ash.

In The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1, the table is set, both figuratively and literally. Figurative table setting includes meeting our narrator, Nick Carraway, and getting a sense of the wealthy Long Island neighborhood where the novel will take place. Literal table setting—well, that’s the dinner Nick has with his cousin Daisy, her husband Tom, and their friend (and Nick’s eventual love interest) Jordan Baker.

Keep reading to learn more about what happens in this chapter, understand how it touches on the novel’s main themes, and see close readings of key quotations!

One of the most arresting images in The Great Gatsby is Nick's vision of Gatsby stretching his arms out towards a small green light on the opposite shore of the bay. The mysterious, almost mystical nature of this gesture is a sure-fire sign that this green light is a symbol.

What is a symbol? It's something that is given extra meaning beyond itself. Something that stops being simply an everyday object, and instead represents thoughts and ideas that are bigger than itself.

What are the abstract ideas behind the green light in The Great Gatsby? Read on to see where this symbol pops up in the novel, what themes it is connected to, which characters are most closely associated with it, and some ideas for essay topics on this symbol.

In The Great Gatsby, money is a huge motivator in the characters' relationships, motivations, and outcomes. Most of the characters reveal themselves to be highly materialistic, their motivations driven by their desire for money and things: Daisy marries and stays with Tom because of the lifestyle he can provide her, Myrtle has her affair with Tom due to the privileged world it grants her access to, and Gatsby even lusts after Daisy as if she is a prize to be won. After all, her voice is "full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl. . . ." (7.106).

So how exactly does materialism reveal itself as a theme, how can it help us analyze the characters, and what are some common assignments surrounding this theme? We will dig into all things money here in this guide.

Chapter 7 marks the climax of The Great Gatsby. Twice as long as every other chapter, it first ratchets up the tension of the Gatsby-Daisy-Tom triangle to a breaking point in a claustrophobic scene at the Plaza Hotel, and then ends with the grizzly gut punch of Myrtle’s death.

Read our full summary of The Great Gatsby Chapter 7 to see how all dreams die, only to be replaced with a grim and cynical reality.

In Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby, we finally—finally!—we get to see one of Gatsby's totally off the hook parties! And, it more than lives up to the hype as far as Nick is concerned. Even more excitingly, we finally get to meet the man, the myth, the legend himself—Gatsby, in the flesh! So why then does this reveal, which the novel has been building toward for 2.5 chapters, seem so anticlimactic?

Read on for our Great Gatsby Chapter 3 summary, covering the highs and lows of the Gatsby Saturday night experience.

If The Great Gatsby were college, Chapter 2 would be the drunk frat party that gets way out of control, with Tom Buchanan as that guy yelling at everyone to chug. That's because this chapter is all about Tom's double life: Nick meets his mistress, gets wasted at her small apartment party in Manhattan, and gets an up close and personal view into Tom's violent tendencies.

Read on for a full The Great Gatsby Chapter 2 summary, plus explication of connections to the book's main themes and analysis of important passages!

Maybe you've just finished The Great Gatsby and need some guidance for unpacking its complex themes and symbols. Or maybe it's been awhile since you last read this novel, so you need a refresher on its plot and characters. Or maybe you're in the middle of reading it and want to double check that you're not missing the important stuff. Whatever you need - we've got you covered with this comprehensive summary of one of the great American novels of all time!

Not only does this complete The Great Gatsby summary provide a detailed synopsis of the plot, but it'll also give you: capsule descriptions for the book's major characters, short explanations of most important themes, as well as links to in-depth articles about these and other topics.

(Image: Molasz / Wikimedia Commons)