My Premium Parking Pass

Here is a picture of my college campus which accommodates 31,000 students. As you can probably imagine parking could be an issue if they did not handle the situation properly. Now at my last school I was Parking and Safety chair for SGA so I have had a little experience with the inner workings of the system that they call "parking." To avoid all of the hassles that I have experienced in the past I decided to spend the extra money and get a premium parking pass.

Much to my horror, I spent my first day on campus missing my first class and driving around for the duration trying to find a place to park. Not the way I wanted to start off this semester! I decided that it would get better as soon as everyone was settled into their classes. After all, I did buy a premium pass!

The next day that I went to class I drove around for 40 minutes and finally saw a guy pulling out of a parallel spot. Unfortunately he was heading in the opposite direction that I was but I jumped in anyway and promptly got a ticket.

The next parking adventure I drove around for 30 minutes and finally resorted to metered parking. I spent 4 dollars parking in a metered spot despite my premium parking pass.

I found out that premium pass holders can also park in general so when I went to class on Tuesday, again, I drove around for 20 minutes and finally decided to just go park in the general parking area. When I got over there I was horrified to find that there were no open spots at all... or so I thought!

I continued driving further and further away from my classes when I finally came upon a patch of about 8 open parking spaces... on the other side of the football field. If you will glance at the picture of my campus, the football field is towards the bottom left hand corner of the map and is represented by an oval. Now if you will look again at the upper right hand corner to the building the furthest away you will find my first class!!! I don't think that I could walk further if I started from home!

I have since found out that the bookstore sells as many "premium" passes as students will buy. In other words there are about 10,000 students trying to park in 3,000 spaces!

So while I find this situation only slightly humorous, I will continue to attend school and park in a not so premium parking space with a good attitude because... what else can I do?!!!