we need this at Columbia

We’ve all been there. It always seems that whenever you urgently have a place to be, you inevitably find yourself trapped behind slow walkers. First-year staff writer Alex Tang writes about his take on this common experience.

“MOVE!” I scream out, silently in my head of course.

It’s 10:08am, and I have 2 more minutes and 3 more blocks to get to my seminar. I’ve already been late twice, and a third tardy equals an absence. I do not want an absence under any circumstance.

The object of my silent anger is the gaggle of three students in front of me on College Walk. They’ve spread out to form an impenetrable chain that might as well be the Berlin Wall. They walk at a glacial pace. I do everything in my power not to headbutt my way through them.

We go to school in New York City, speed-walking capital of the world. Objectively, this city has no chill. How dare these students take their sweet time and enjoy the present moment. There’s them – content with their comfortable, well-paced lives. And then there’s me – jealous of their happiness and – gasp – realizing that it’s now 10:09.

Screw manners. I’ll probably never see these people again. I push myself forward between two of the slow-walking sloths.

“Excuse me,” I grunt, brushing past the girl on the left. I narrowly avoid a guy who’s sprinting in the opposite direction, carrying a cup of Starbucks in one hand and a stapler in the other. He seems to be a hotter mess than I am at the moment.

To the group of students I shoved myself through this morning, I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re all perfectly nice people. In other circumstances, I’d love to introduce myself, and maybe grab lunch with you all at Ferris. But when it’s 10:09am and people have places to go, please stick to the right of the walkway, and leave the middle of the walkway open for us chronically late, speed-walking messes of human beings.