It’s 2:29 pm on a Wednesday afternoon, and I have one goal: get to the parking lot and out to the street as quickly as possible. I race to get into my car and get in the line to exit the senior parking lot. During my walk through the parking lot, I dodge countless cars backing up into me and others nearly hitting me as they also rush to escape the mess that is the line to leave the high school. After my dangerous journey, I find that now I am in the middle of a ridiculously long line that will take me at least 20 minutes to escape from to reach the blissful openness of Humphrey Street. This is a typical day in the war zone that is the senior parking lot at Marblehead High School. In the morning, students fight for a spot in a parking lot far too small to accommodate the large Class of 2020, often resorting to parking in a visitor parking space or further away from the school. When students are desperate to just get into school before the final bell, they will even resort to parking in one of the many available faculty spaces, even though they will be later asked to move their car.
It is great to be able to park near the school, but this is ridiculous. The senior parking lot is small and in the back corner of the parking lot for the high school. This means that in order to leave the lot after school, the entire senior class (or at least those who managed to find a space in the first place) is stuck in a huge line behind every parent coming from the pick up and drop off line, as well as every senior who parked in the visitor parking lot, which is much closer to the exit. Not only does this line take around 20 minutes of sitting in stationary traffic to escape from, but it is full of almost-accidents and road rage as relatively new drivers attempt to squeeze between other cars and get out more quickly.
Like many other students, the best solution that I can come up with to this problem is to attempt to be one of the first students to leave the school so that I am the first in line to exit. This method has not been met with much success, as everyone in the parking lot seems to have had the same idea, so I now experience the same amount of traffic and apparently rushed out of the school for absolutely no reason. As I search for new ways to combat this issue, I will continue to risk my life every day in the war zone that is the too-small senior parking lot.