The time has come again for the start of school, bringing with it the familiar ritual of getting your schedule, probably changing your schedule and making the rounds through all of your friends for an endless cycle of “Did you do anything fun this summer?”
Predictable.
Easy.
The same as the beginning of last year, and the year before.
This year though, the start of my junior year, brought on a whole new experience. It all began when I got my license at the start of August. With the license comes the trials and tribulations of not only driving, but driving in the school parking lot.
Now, I’m not going to say anything particularly negative about that, but it can be very treacherous. I mean, even before you go to school to get a parking pass, you have to sign a waiver saying that you won’t drive on the sidewalks.
On the morning of Aug. 17, the Monday before school started, I woke up early and got to school before 7 a.m. to make sure that I got a pass. Little did I know that many other people had had the same idea, only in a much more extreme version.
I arrived to a relatively full parking lot and the sight of two of the boys in my grade running down the sidewalk and cheering. Assuming this was just regular teenage boy behavior, not a victory chant about getting a parking pass, I got out of my car, passed a surplus of lawn chairs and blankets that covered the entire lawn outside of the school and headed inside.
I didn’t quite understand what I was in for until I went inside and saw the massive line of people stretching all the way from the counseling office to the back of the lunchroom. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the layout of Park City High School, this is about a one minute walk on a good day. This was not a good day.
I slowly walked down the line to the back, passing a bunch of very sleep-deprived looking teenagers and listening to an announcement that had come on over the loudspeakers saying that they had cameras on the line and if they caught anyone cutting then administration would take away their passes.
After what felt like an eternity I reached the back of the line and found the friend I was looking for. She quickly mentioned to me that she had gotten there at 5 a.m. and had actually been at the front of the queue to get inside, but had ended up at the back due to everyone rushing the door as soon as they opened. This was pretty sad as we were so far away that we couldn’t even see the table distributing the passes.
It turns out that many people had stayed on school grounds overnight and slept in their cars to get there in time, and when the doors opened at 6:30 a.m., they all tried to get in at the same time.
While I don’t think that anyone got hurt, I know a lot of people who were thrown around and even recorded and harassed later. I’m not sure what school officials can do to manage this, aside from prohibiting people from parking overnight and making a line to get inside on Parking Pass Days, but I do think that something needs to be done.
This process really shouldn’t be like a rope drop at Snowbird after a three day storm cycle.
The current system isn’t fair, especially to someone like my friend, who had been in the front and ended up having to wait for hours in the back and almost not get a pass because of all of the people who cut in front of her in that initial stampede.
In addition to all of this, the parking passes are extremely expensive at $150 (a $50 increase over last year’s prices).
As I stood in line, waiting and listening to all of the different conversations happening around me, I heard someone say that they had gotten there at 9 p.m. the night before, and one of my other friends reported getting there at 4 a.m.
Absolutely insane, if you ask me.
At about the two hour mark, I remembered that they only accepted licenses from Aug. 1 or before, and I had gotten mine on the 10th, due to a series of unfortunate circumstances involving tests and DMV appointments.
I was stressed out, but I had also been waiting in line for so long at this point that I didn’t want to have wasted the entire morning when the distribution table was finally in sight.
When I reached the front, after what seemed like years but was in reality two-and-a-half hours, I filled out the form, gave them my $150 check and got my pass with little ceremony and went on my merry way to get my computer for the upcoming school year.
By the time I came back 10 minutes later, the line was gone and so were the people distributing the passes, because they had finally run out and didn’t have any more to hand out.
My pass was for the nearby church parking lot, which had a limited number of spots available to high schoolers. These spots were outlined in red paint instead of white so that you would know where to park. If you’re a high school student that parks in a white parking spot, there is a very good chance that your car will be towed, so good luck explaining that to your parents.
I finally arrived back home at around 11 that morning, and started school later that week. As the school year actually got underway, though, the actual struggle of being in the parking lot began.
The now-discontinued Park City High School Bad Parking Instagram page had a short lived campaign of humiliating the worst parking jobs every day. Couldn’t be me, I promise. Cough, cough. Anyways, I did repark. It wasn’t even that bad, I swear.
Why is it discontinued, you might ask? Probably because they turned into vigilantes and threatened to expose someone who crashed into someone else’s car, and posted publicly that they would call the police if said perpetrator didn’t come forward and help fix it.
People also tend to drive very fast there, so watch out everyone! For the sake of yourselves and the rest of us, please stay out of the way and don’t walk in the middle of the road.
These are just a few of the goings on in the parking lot, but I hear new stories almost daily.
One of these happened last week where a friend of mine told me that someone started doing donuts around her car even though the parking lot was mostly full, and she had no idea who it was.
Sounded like a routine day at PCHS to me.