Shoutout to Cyrus B., for clearly missing the sarcasm intended with this article, and for this, lovely, quote: “The person making this survey is unreasonable and egocentric.” On that note, a minor disclaimer: If you fall into the targeted category of this article, we encourage you to change your ways, but we have no intention to offend you to the point that you can respond only with random insults.

Now, take a moment before you read this article, and imagine. Imagine the scent of teenage sweat intertwined with the entire bottle of cologne that the kid next to you clearly dumped on himself this morning. The unpleasant feeling of the student behind you stepping on the backs of your shoes, and the constant jostle characterized by being drowned in the students around you and their tremendous backpacks. Imagine being trapped behind the student who seems to have the rest of the week to get to their classes, and not quite being able to squeeze past them because there’s a torrent of students going the other way to your left is a wall. Wait… you don’t have to imagine. Welcome to Bob Jones, everybody! 

Whether you’re tromping through the hallways, about to go take that test you forgot you had, or you’re literally dancing because thank the lord the school day is over, you’ve walked through the hallways. You’ve probably also been extremely annoyed with the other students in those hallways, for their apparent lack of common courtesy. I, for one, think it’s pretty rude of these students. It’s not hard to walk the hallways, and it’s not necessarily even wrong to stop to talk to friends. It’s actually pretty simple.

If we were to take the model that I consider correct, treating the hallway like a road, then it’s quite simple. Each side of the hallway has its dedicated direction, and if you’re going to stop to chat with friends then you pull over into a side hallway. Most people will even agree with me when I say that talking to friends in the hallways is also completely acceptable. Senior Diane Pham said, “The slow people are usually the ones that don’t want to go to class or just want to talk to their friends. Which, sure, do what you want, but don’t take up the whole hallway and inconvenience others while doing it.” Imagine the madness if seven cars just stopped and circled up in the middle of the freeway, effectively stopping everyone else. Or, two cars could pull into a parking lot, and wouldn’t be in the way of anyone other than the people in that one parking lot. 

Then comes the speed! On the roads, far too many people are speeding, so what’s with everyone walking at the speed of molasses in the hallways? I’m not asking for Sonic the Hedgehog, but I am asking for people to take more than three steps a minute… and perhaps less than three thousand? Junior Andrew Zamarron addressed the student body: “In regards to people who walk too slow, please speed up. We get it, you don’t care about class or if you’re late and would rather talk to friends, but some of us actually want to stay on time and not fall behind. For people that walk too fast, please be mindful and respectful to the people walking in front of you and around you. It’s not our fault when we flat tire you and cause you to trip or something just because you cut us off while your half running to your classes.” 

Navigating the hellways of Bob Jones is a painful experience that we have all and will all experience, time and time again. Just maybe, someday, the kids that would never usually read these articles will come across this and decide that they can change their ways. Until then, the rest of us can commiserate together in all that extra time we spend stuck behind them in the hallways.