By Allie ’12

We are supposed to be the most well-spoken, graceful, perky women in the world, and yet we can’t seem to walk down a hallway properly. Re­cently, I was nursing a steaming mug of Italian Roast, waiting to go into class, when a group of four oblivious twelve-year-olds rushed down the hallway (taking up the entire width of the hall, mind you) and caused me to step backwards, trip over the jet­sam in the green-line area and spill my coffee. In the following ten min­utes, I was a blubbering, blunder­ing, bitter Bertha on the flaming roof, screaming after the children in my soiled, dripping uniform.

Now, I understand that many of you are not…me. I tend to err on the slightly paranoid, profoundly hyper­bolic and vaguely dramatic side. But I don’t know one senior who would not have a had similar reaction when running on a few hours of sleep, a diet of only carbohydrates and glu­cose and the flaming emotional resi­due from yet another encounter with the Common Application. People say Marlborough is an “intense” place to go to school, usually referring to the workload, but the chance of being hospitalized for a mental breakdown due to stress is actually statistically lower than the chance of injury due to a rolling backpack before an ASM. As George Washington (probably) once said, “What the heck, world???”

So maybe not everyone has been physically assaulted, but we have all been behind a group of girls walking .03 miles per hour who are unaware of their obnox­iously slow pace and blocking of the entire span of the hallway. Then there are the downright lethal doors that everyone feels the need to fling open as hard as she can, or those lovely people who decide the opti­mum place to chat is in the middle of the stairwell during a passing pe­riod. We may now have five whole minutes to get to our next class, but no one wants to spend three of those minutes listening to someone talk about that terrible Biology test. All Biology tests are terrible, and we all know that. Do not loiter. I feel bad growling at people I don’t know, or singing loudly on my way through a crowd to soften the blow of my aggressive shoving, but my creepi­ness could be avoided if we would all would show a little common decency. That’s in everyone’s best interest: making me less creepy. Let’s make passing periods less stressful than our classes. The next time you want to eat your breakfast burrito while you walk up the steps, or scream at your “buddy” 30 yards away about Glee, or rock back and forth in the middle of the hall before a math test, please just consider: are people hating me right now? If the answer is yes, be the change Allie ’12 wishes to see in the world. Thanks.