We’ve All Been There: The Winter Walk To Class

Brrrr.

Your alarm goes off and before you even get out of bed, the winter chill hits you. It’s gonna be a cold day, which is great since you have 4 classes and a meeting. You pull back the covers and jump out of bed. Holy hell it’s cold. You curse your state. You curse your old house and it’s terrible heater. You curse your stupid choice to pick a school not in the Caribbean. You run to the bathroom and wash your face with too-hot water. Yeah, it may dry out your skin, but right now it feels good.

By Lauren

You run back to your room to get dressed, jumping around a little in front of your closet to warm up. Then you start pulling out the layers. Jeans aren’t warm enough on their own, so you slip on a pair of leggings and pull the jeans on over them. Then you put on a tank, a long sleeve shirt and a sweatshirt.

Somehow, you still feel cold.

You rifle through your sock drawer looking for the warmest pair of socks you’ve got. It isn’t until you sit down to put them on – and all that hard work from bending in those 12 layers leaves you sweaty – that you begin to warm up.

You pack your bag, pile on your boots, jacket, scarf, hat and gloves. Then you brace yourself for the cold winter winds.

Despite the fact that you walk to class with your face down, the wind whips you. Hard. About halfway through your trek the tips of your fingers start to go numb. Then your ears start to burn. Your eyes water. And no matter how many times to sniffle, whatever is in your nose just keeps migrating south towards your upper lip. You wipe it off, a string of snot now adorning your mitten.

Finally, when you’re about three seconds away from becoming a human icicle – you arrive to class. Before settling in for lecture you scurry to the bathroom to fix yourself/thaw out a bit. You search for the paper towel dispenser to blow your nose. Yeah, it’s like blowing your nose into a piece of notebook paper, but the snotsicles need to go. Of course, this bathroom only has hand dryers. You sneak into a stall and grab some (single-ply) toilet paper. You don’t think anything of it until you realize everything you just blew out of your nose is now covering your numb hands. You look around to make sure no one saw that, then toss out the toilet paper and run your hands under warm water.

It feels so good.

You keep your hands under the dryer for a few minutes longer than necessary, take one last look in the mirror to make sure those fleece-hat-caused-fly-aways have been tamed and head to class. You take off your jacket and pile it and everything elso onto the seat next to you. Then you reach down to grab your notebook from your bag and discover that your pants are wet up to the knees. And, now that you think about it, your socks feel soaked too. (Thanks, Uggs.)

You spend the entirety of class wiggling your toes to keep them from falling off, yet somehow sweating at the same time. You try to concentrate on what’s happening on the Power Point up front, but all you can think about is stripping off some of those layers. But you can’t – you can already feel the giant pit stains that have formed under that sweatshirt. So you deal. And you sweat. And you move your feet around to make sure they are still attached.

And then when class is over, you pile on the layers once again and head out into the cold, winter day and start the cycle all over again.

We’ve all been there.
And we have the snot-covered gloves to prove it.