In spite of all my preparation, I still missed my first class. There were 2 parking areas I had scoped out ahead of time, thinking that they would have vacancies (because now there are parking garages on campus). Nope. I drove around for about half an hour, getting more and more upset. Barely avoided a couple of fender benders. Finally I got off campus proper. On the way in, I had noticed some parking by the athletic fields; I checked that out. By permit only. (What kind of permit?) Still further away there was some parking on the side of the street on Martin Ave. I parked there and it looked safe and legal, but I had no idea how far from campus I was.
I went home and checked Googlemaps. It’s about a mile. OK, that’s a possibility. Would be difficult walking a mile in the rain / snow though.
Another possibility is to get up at 5 am, drive in at 6, and be in the parking lot at 6:30 — then sit there and wait to see when the lot starts filling up. The problem with this idea over the long term is that 1) I am unable to drive in the dark and 2) if I wait too late to make the drive, I’ll run into work traffic.
A third possibility is public transportation. When I sat in on a class 5 years ago there was a free shuttle bus that came from a nearby shopping center. The free shuttle bus has been discontinued (because of the new parking garages), but it’s possible that there is a bus with a similar route.
In the meantime, my car’s brakes were acting up this morning. So my lovely husband has volunteered to take me to / from campus til my car is fixed. This will mean getting there early and leaving late, but that’s fine!
What a disaster! Well, it could have been much worse (brakes failing in the parking lot, having an accident). And it was Lecture 1 that I missed. Would have been worse to miss, say, Lecture 17 on the history of Diminished and Augmented Chords.
I feel ashamed and humiliated — “If I were a better driver or was able to think faster on my feet I could have found a way to make it to class. How did all the other students do it? I’m so incompetent.” But then — I thought of one of the students who had spoken at orientation on Friday. He talked about how much he had grown over the past 2 years; when he had his first performance lab he got partway through and then could not remember the rest of the lyrics of the piece he was performing. He had to walk off the stage. But he came back, and the next attempt was better.
