My morning was glorious! On Tuesdays my first class is practically in the middle of the day! (comparatively speaking, that is) Knowing I had to be there at 9:30, I organized out my time pretty well. I set my alarm with enough time to go to the gym, leisurely get ready, drink my smoothie, and then stroll to the shuttle stop, in time to catch the 9:00, which would put me at school with plenty of time to finalize going over notes for my first quiz! So things went as planned.
I arrived at the shuttle stop, and like clock work, it arrived. However, not in my plans, was the fact that is was completely full. So full in fact, that it drove off without me or half the other people standing there. Upon deliberating with two other nursing students about what to do (who also had to be at the same quiz in approximately 25 minutes), and another random “experienced shuttle rider” who was standing there, it was decided that the next shuttle could be full, and if this was the case, we’d be late.
Late–>embarrassed->no quiz->fail quiz->get the failed quiz dropped-> sad! no room for an actual emergency where you might really need to drop a quiz
We were definitely walking.
Here are the facts:
Did I mention that we are the last stop before school? We are the last stop before school.
Did I mention that it is a 25 minute walk? It’s about a 25 minute walk, 19 if you speed walk.
3/3 of us were in “non walking shoes” (Professional dress for lab days)
It was 85 degrees with at least 68% humidity.
2/3 of us started out in cardigans.
Number of JHMI shuttles that passed us on our walk: 5
Diaphoresis? 3/3 (“Profuse sweating” New vocab from P+A! Who knew we’d actually experience it within the week!)
There we were trying to remain positive, walking a steady incline, loosing the cardigans, nervously shooting the breeze, and purposely avoiding the hopelessly undeniable fact that we were going to be late, and that my little linear flow chart would come true for the three of us.
Moving to a brisk gait with 12 minutes of walking left and 5 minutes to get to class, a cab drove by. Did I jump into the road to stop him? … Maybe.
We took $5.00 cab ride, three blocks to school this morning, dripping with sweat. It was gross and hilarious. I don’t think we were laughing though, we mostly just felt gross.
Long, story short, we thanked the cab driver, like this: “Thannnnkkkkssss! Byyyyyeee! You saaaved ussss!” Then ran into the building, took the elevator to the second floor (time saved: 30 seconds) and burst through the door just in time to sweatily, guiltily, and at the same time, triumphantly, take a test from the teacher, who by the way will never know the drama, and sweating, and good intentions that went into our first quiz!