You sing a sad song just to turn it around...

So, let me tell you of the evolution of my bad day. (don't worry, it ends happily.)

It all began this morning, waking up an hour and a half before my class begins (when it only takes me 20 minutes to get ready for class). It's all about the transportation...



Let me give you a brief backstory here. I have a class at the other campus at 8:30am. It takes me about 18 minutes from the time I wake up to get ready for school. There are 4 methods of getting to the other campus, and disadvantages of each.
1. The school shuttle (more like the school glacier that is completely unreliable and slow)
2. The El (which takes about 40 minutes during rush hour, and especially unreliable because it likes to go super slow between stops)
3. A taxi (which would cost about $20, and really isn't that necessary. But of course, it's fastest)
4. The public transportation bus (my preferred method, because I get to class on time, but I have to catch it about 1 hour before class in order to arrive on the campus by 8am, but if I waited for the next bus, I would most likely get to class at 8:45, therefore late to class)

If I had a car, it would be the fastest, because a direct drive from one campus to the other is like fifteen minutes, tops.

Ok, so I leave my room this morning with Katie around 7:25. We usually try and catch the bus that arrives at 7:32. So we are walking (the stop is a few blocks away) and we are waiting for the light to change to cross the street and catch the bus when OH LOOK THERE GOES THE BUS. But it stops at the stop, so we have like, 70 seconds to get across the street and over about 100 feet to catch it. So here I am dodging traffic on Michigan Avenue in order to catch a bus. I run across the street only to see it start chugging along again to the next stop. By now Katie has caught up to me, and she is panting "quick.....run....to....the next stop..." so we are running, backpacks on us, four blocks trying to catch a bus moving at like 30 mph. Katie, the runner she is, catches up to it when it stops at the next bus stop, and is approximately 6 feet from the door when the bus starts moving again. Now, we could have continued chasing it, but we kind of assumed it would be highly unlikely to catch up to a bus going 50mph on Lake shore drive.

So at this point, it's like 7:38 and we are ten blocks away from our building. Katie's class starts at 8:05, so she is really in a rush. We don't want to take the el because we would have to walk 12 blocks to get to the entrance, and if we waited for a bus, we would have to wait in the cold for about 25 minutes until one came. Our only real option was the school shuttle.
As we were walking back, we were wheezing, spitting up loogies (lovely, i know...but I really am not in that bad of shape...I can take 14 flights of stairs a couple times a week and I am not exhausted).
To be honest, I don't know what was wrong with me, since I am still having some subtle wheezing when I breathe now...five hours later.
So we walk alllllll the way back to the school, to the shuttle bus stop (we get to wait indoors, so that's nice), when I see only one girl in line. (By now it's 7:42) This usually signifies that we had just missed a shuttle. Then I find out it doesn't even come until 8am (the FIRST SHUTTLE OF THE DAY) which is stupid, since it is unlikely that you'd get to class on time taking the shuttle if it arrives at 8 (because they have to empty it, then to load the bus some people are slow and/or stupid and take forever, then the trip is about 20 minutes without traffic). So here I am...just waiting...and the bus (i will applaud it on this) arrives precisely at 7:58, TWO WHOLE MINUTES EARLY! Normally the bus is 10-20 minute LATE. So I get on the bus like "sure, i won't get some time before class to relax or read, but I will get to class on time."
But that was before the trip began. When we get off of lake shore drive, there is a bumper to bumper traffic jam about 15 blocks away from my school. I was in said traffic jam from about 8:15 until 8:45.

Therefore, I arrive FIFTEEN MINUTES LATE TO CLASS.
You may think "no big deal, only fifteen minutes" but when you compare it to the fact that I got up an HOUR AND A HALF BEFORE CLASS BEGAN, it's a little ridiculous.
PS. Our shuttle caught up with the public transportation bus that I could have caught had I waited for the next one to come....but I would have had to stand in the cold.

So at this point, my joy level is at about 0%.


Later, however, it rises.
Its about 11:00, ten minutes before my second morning class ends, when EHHHH! EHHH! EHHH! EHHH(this is my siren noise)! EHHH! EHH! there are flashing lights, and it is clear that the fire alarm has gone off. I am just happy that I can leave, because this class sucks so much, so my joy level is about 20%. Our teacher usually leaves the door open to the hallway. I happen to glance out there as I am gathering my books and I see a SUPER guilty-looking kid acting as if he just, well, set off the fire alarm of a building filled with 300 people. Yeah, it was definitely him. As he paces back and forth with his guilty, furrowed brow, I see the fire alarm has been pushed behind him...by his backpack. The moron was chilling in the hallway, and leaned right up against the alarm, setting it off. Way to go, Mr. Stupid.I'm at about a 90% by now.

So I leave, and catch the bus after pretty much no wait at all, it was great. 95%

Then, to top it all off, I sit by a group of stupid people ( I assume college freshmen, 3 boys and 1 girl). I love stupid people. I love how...gosh, I can't even explain it. I just love it. Especially Mr. "Der, I Swear I didn't set off the fire alarm...what's that? It's behind me? And I was the only one in the hallway? Naw, wasn't me!" So I get on the bus and get to hear intelligent conversational topics like "dude, have you ever tried throwing one of those Nalgene bottles off a roof? They're indestructible!" or "You've heard of the El Niño, right?" To get a visual of the boys, imagine white suburbans wearing flat-brimmed baseball hats with a huge circumference.

100%