Bwogger Daniel Ortega-Venni has a message of support and personal suffering for all those students with tight breaks between classes.

Dear students who are still freaking out about the 10 minute gap they have between a class at Barnard and Columbia, let me tell you the story of how I, an asthmatic, triumphed over a very similar ordeal in the second semester of my sophomore year.

Let me set the scene. It was Winter 2018. I had signed up for a good assortment of classes, two of them being an Advanced Fiction Workshop and an Intermediate Spanish class that met 10 minutes apart on Wednesday. While not optimal, it was the best I could do under the circumstances so I atheistically prayed to the gods that they weren’t too far apart from each other.

Then I checked SSOL. Advanced Fiction met in Kent – makes sense, Kent is the creative writing building. But Spanish…met in Knox. It met in the Jewish Seminary (someone please explain to me why this was a thing). It met four blocks away from Kent.

Four blocks. 10 minutes. Asthma. You do the math.

So then my parents had the brilliant idea to bring an old scooter we had had forever (seriously, I think it was my mom’s before it was mine) out of storage and for me to bring it with me to campus and scoot the distance from the Kent to Knox. I was stressed, but what other choice did I have?

So, me being me, I practiced a few times (I hadn’t been on this scooter in years). I practiced in the park during the last few days of winter break and on campus during the first day of classes. It went fine, I guess, but it was just practice. Just like a practice math test isn’t the same as the midterm, neither is practicing riding a scooter versus actually riding it the day of.

Up came Wednesday. I lugged my scooter with me to class and set it under my seat. 1 hour and 50 minutes later, class ended. I grabbed my scooter and quickly descended the stairs. I walked briskly through campus to Earl steps and embarked on my scooter. Luckily for me, the path from Earl Steps to Knox was downhill so I was able to glide all the way down the street with no mishaps (not even bumping into someone!) and I somehow showed up to class 2 minutes early.

That’s right, a whole 120 seconds ahead of schedule!! And thus, began my weekly scooting to class.

So, the next time you look down at your schedule and freak out about that 10-minute gap between classes, just know that my scooter and I have faith in you.

PS I actually lost that scooter so if anyone knows of a rogue scooter floating around campus let me know X)

Image via Wikimedia