parking lot
Parking lots become nightmares for drivers
BY EMMY BARCELONA ON DECEMBER 18, 2014
The day I got my car is easily one of my favorite memories. It’s something everyone looks forward to. While I love driving my car to and from school, I only wish I was leaving it in a better place. I think my cousin has heard me drop more f-bombs in that parking lot than she’s probably ever heard in her entire life.
The first day of school is a nightmare. First days are always dreaded, but drivers know what I’m talking about. It is near impossible to find your parking spot because the numbers on the spots have faded beyond recognition. You’re lucky if even half of your number is decipherable. Students end up taking any available spot that they can find until things finally work themselves out weeks later. On the first day, I think I circled around the parking lot five times until I finally found my spot. They need a serious touch-up, as do the lines. This could prevent a lot of confusion. While fixing faded numbers is out of students’ hands, the trash issue is not. The parking lot is littered with Chick-fil-A drinks, Bojangles bags and plenty of other nasty things. I like my breakfast as much as the next person, but there is a place for these things. Please have the decency, or at least the common sense, to throw your trash away in a TRASH CAN. There is one right by the doors of the school; it takes an extra five seconds to stop and dispose of your trash on the way into the building. The parking lot is not your personal trash can. I think I can speak for all student drivers when I say that getting out of the parking lot after school is a disaster. By the time we’re let out of school, parents are lined up between the rows of our parked cars. I have the bad luck of parking right where they line up and it takes me at least five minutes just to back out of my spot. Then there’s the front of the school, where parents just sit there waiting for their kids. Going around them is hard because of the incoming cars, so you’re forced to sit there for God knows how long just waiting for some kid to finally get their butt out of school. Some of us have places to be and can’t wait the 10 extra minutes your parents decide to sit there. We have sports, jobs or other obligations that put us on a time crunch. After school, I have soccer and we’re given around 10 or so minutes to get to the soccer field. I park by the PAC so I have to drive all the way around the school to get to the field. I have to simultaneously change into my workout clothes and drive in order to even get close to making it in the allotted time my coach gives me. It is easier than you’d think considering the amount of times I’m sitting with my car in park behind some parent. So freshmen and any other non-driving students, if you’re going to be picked up by someone please tell them to find an empty parking spot to wait in. There are plenty of spots open for them to take advantage of, and if that’s too much to ask for, when the bell rings, don’t stand around in the halls and socialize. Get to your mom’s car pronto because otherwise she’s having to wait for you, which means a ton of other students are also waiting for you. While sitting in the parking lot is annoying, driving in the parking lot can be downright scary. People speed and take turns with reckless abandon. You can’t turn out of your row and just hope that the car will stop for you. You can’t reverse out of your spot at top speed. The parking lot is meant for a speed below 30 mph. Let’s just try to keep the wrecks at a minimum. Most of the issues of the parking lot can be easily fixed. It just takes some responsibility and common sense. Getting out of bed to come to school is hard enough on its own; why make it that much harder for us? |
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