BY ADRIONA MURPHY (’15)

Now that the weather is warming up, most people start breaking out their shorts and tanks tops, thankful for the heat wave that hopefully will stick around. I am extremely excited that it’s warm enough to not have to bundle up in a huge coat. But you know what’s even more exciting?  I’m excited that I don’t have to deal with the horrendous winter mornings in the parking lot.

After a perfect snow day, I’d drive to school relaxed and fully rested, listening so the radio and then I pull into the parking lot and WHAM. There doesn’t even appear to be a parking lot, it just looks like a white sheet of icy white stuff. Not even snow really. It’s more like a mixture of ice, slush, and a thin layer of snow. They had clearly plowed the day before, and that was extremely helpful, but it had, unfortunately, frozen over and without any salt it turned into something out of a winter themed horror movie with various obstacles you have to complete in order to make it to the safety of the warm building.

The first challenge is making your way to your spot. Now, it wouldn’t be so hard if you could actually see your spot. But because the lines in the parking lot are white, they’re essentially invisible. You also can’t see any of the numbers so chances are you’re going to park in the wrong spot, setting off a chain reaction. It’s like when someone sits in the wrong seat on an airplane. Then the person that was supposed to sit there, sits in someone else’s seat, and on and on until everyone is confused.

Then you have the people that park in front of the light posts. The snow is piled up around them and those students hardly even have a spot and are forced to find someplace else to park. Which again creates a problem, because where are they supposed to park? They could park in the gravel, but that’s just a bad as the parking lot because you can’t tell where anything else. And let’s be real. No one who’s in the upper lot wants to park in the back of the lower lot.

Once you’re finally able to park, then it’s the treacherous walk into the school. The melted snow from the day before has formed mini lakes of death that you are forced to walk across. One wrong step and you could end on your back staring up at the sky and wondering why you even bothered to come to school today.

There was one morning where I was walking into school and another student just stepped out of his parent’s car and before I could blink he was on the group because there was a patch of ice right where he stepped out of the car. That’s ridiculous to me.

There has to be a way to prevent that from happening. Now, I don’t know if it was literally too cold to use salt on the sidewalk and some of the icier spots of the parking lot, but I feel like it was at least worth a try. But again, for all I know, there was nothing they could do about it.

But if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that everyone is excited that the cold and ice is finally gone.