Driving to school is a rite of passage for juniors and seniors into the world of “upperclassmen.” I, as a junior, have been waiting for this time for eleven long years of riding the bus and pestering my parents for rides. But now a new era has dawned and has, in my opinion, brought a new problem to light: Sophomores driving to school.

Please, don’t get me wrong, I love the sophomores and have many friends in that class, but their driving needs to be addressed. When I was a lowly sophomore I was not driving to school, I was waking up and asking my dad twelve times to drive me and not make me take the bus. But obviously, today that is not the case. I am driving into the parking lot at 7:20 a.m. each morning, hoping and praying that someone will not come speeding around the corner and into a situation that will leave me with no car and a bill that I will have to resolve.

That summer between sophomore and junior year is a time to mature. A time to become more experienced. I understand that RaRa from Jungle has told you that you are a great driver and that you are ready to be on the road. But what they do not teach you in drivers training is parking lot etiquette. It is not polite to go cut someone off for a parking spot. It is not polite to go 40 out of a parking spot and act like you own the road. And it is certainly not polite to park diagonally and inadvertently take up two parking spots.

I will admit, I am not the best “parker” on the planet, but because of this issue, I think we should re-open the senior-only parking lot. If you did not know, the school had a senior only parking lot years ago. In complete honesty, I truly believe that that should make a comeback. The main parking lot in the back of the school is so overcrowded with all of the sophomores driving, along with the juniors and seniors. And the idea of bringing this back, leads into my next point.

Trying to get out of the parking lot at 2:50  is the one thing I know I can look forward to dreading every day. I park in the morning and that is the easy part. You sit in line, behind all of the other cars waiting for a nice parent or student to let you turn into the parking lot. But at the end of the day, that is where it gets interesting.

This is my situation: I park in the overflow lot because it is closer to my first hour and is less stressful than trying to find a spot in the main lot. But when I try to leave after school, I turn around, ready to back up, and look to see a line of cars blocking my way out. I understand that we all have the same goal, and that is to get out, but come on. There are two ways out, the main drive and through the overflow lot. In my opinion, one should not cut through the overflow lot just to maybe make it out of the parking lot faster. And when people do that it makes it so that the people parked in the overflow cannot back out. And even when one is able to back out and able to get to the front of the overflow line, it is hard to get out. Many people, besides the rare one who will let you out, do not let you out.

And the parents… In the front of the school, we have the front drive, it is where most parents drop off their kids every morning. This is the place where they are supposed to drop them off. But when the parents go to the back it just creates more stress on the students. They are whipping around the corners and confusing us by making us think they are trying to find a spot to park. It also takes stress off of the parents, because they would not have to watch out for students whipping around corners as well.  When they use the front drive it makes it easier on all of us.

In conclusion, I think that we should re-open the senior only parking lot. This would take stress and wasted time out of every driving student at the school.