Picture this: you’re a second-semester senior and school is less stressful than it’s ever been. You wake up at the sound of your first alarm, excited to see your friends and take naps in your classes. Although one would expect the rest of your day to go well, you know that’s not the case. You leave your house before the sun even graces the horizon and spend the short drive to school mentally preparing for the storm that is to come. You, like many other seniors at JP, are about to fight a war…to find a parking spot.

As you enter the senior lot, you can immediately tell that finding a spot today is going to be tougher than usual. Although your perfect morning allowed you to leave your house much earlier than usual, you still haven’t escaped the treacherous quest for a parking spot. You make your way inside slowly, trying not to hit the many cars in made-up spots along the sides of the road. The deeper you venture into the parking lot, the more hope you lose; time is running out and you can’t afford to be late again––twenty-three times is more than enough.

Suddenly, after scanning the rows of parked cars, your eyes land on an empty spot––huzzah! You make your way over quickly, before anyone else sees the little patch of heaven you just found. As you start turning into the spot, your heart drops. There, in the center of a perfectly good parking spot, stands an ominous, bright orange monster: a cone. Dejected, you keep moving through the lot in pursuit of a spot. At the rate your search is going, you might have to make up your own spot. Or worse, risk parking in one of the many empty spots in the teacher lot. 

As you drive all the way to the back by the tennis courts, you see a single empty spot next to a pile of dirt and construction equipment. Beggars can’t be choosers, you tell yourself. It’ll have to do. You drive over to the spot as fast as you can, only to be disappointed again. In the adjacent spot, you see what might be the worst parking job in the world. The huge Honda Odyssey is parked completely slanted, with half of its body in what was supposed to be your spot. You wonder how its driver acquired a license, and briefly consider leaving an opinionated note on the windshield. After some careful consideration, you decide against that and continue your search for a spot––it’s now 7:36 and there simply isn’t time.

At this point, you’ve all but given up on the dream of getting to homeroom; the parking lot has a unique way of ruining your mood for the rest of the day. You drive in circles for what seems like hours, finally accepting that if you keep going you are going to be late. You make one more lap around the parking lot, desperately hoping that it can’t be true, but it is: you have to park in the junior lot. There’s nothing more humbling than having to walk out at the end of the day, leaving your friends that parked in the senior lot to make the trek to your car, all the way in the J-lot. As you make your way out of the school, you try to take some comfort in the fact that you’ve already hit rock bottom. Realistically, your day can only go up from here. Right?