We’ve all had times where other people have caused us to do something we weren’t prepared for. Things happen all the time where we wish we could’ve took a different route, or wished we had some type of superpower to get us out of a particular hole. When you feel stuck, you feel claustrophobic, like you can’t get out of something.

 Have you ever had an important appointment or a job that you had to get to at a specific time? Before getting there, you plan out which streets or highways to take. Sometimes the coast is clear, but, more often than not, the coast is cluttered. (This is Atlanta, after all.) And when it’s cluttered, you’re stuck in traffic again. Where am I going with all this?

The stairwell and elevators of North Atlanta High School are exactly like the above scenario. Once you’re in roads or hallways, there’s a chance you’re going to feel stuck or claustrophobic.  We have 10 minutes to get from class to class. About 8 times out of 10, we make it to the next one on time.

“The stairs are too tiring, there are too many people in there, and it’s just plain hard to maneuver”, said Monica Bable, a junior, “I’d rather take the elevator even though it takes a while to get here.”

Bable, unlike others, would rather use some of her class transit time to wait on the elevator. Zach Achaab, a senior, is different. “I’m an athlete, so it’s nothing for me to walk. I will take the stairs,” he said.

Outside of school, our parents and other adults contend with traffic and congestion. North Atlanta students have their own kind of traffic, only it’s different in that it’s on the elevators or the stairwells. They say that school is supposed to prepare us for the real world. And since we’re going to be navigating traffic when we’re in our jobs and careers, I guess we’re getting that “real world” experience, right there in crowded stairwells and elevators.