Please have pity on me, for I have the displeasure of taking a miniature hike every day and I have no say in the matter. I have four periods that require vast amounts of labor just to get to my next academic activity.

Yes, I have to walk up several flights of stairs every day, and that’s only counting the ones in the main building. Only one of my classes does not require a great amount of effort to get to.

Sometimes I wish I was still in middle school. I had a wonderful and joyous time at Pine Valley, where my classes were at most a few feet from each other and I didn’t have to climb any stairs to get to them. I never had to worry about getting to class on time.

It was a blissful existence until I was told  about Cal High and how it had an infestation of stairs and long hallways. When I started signing up for electives near the end of middle school, my sister told me that most of my classes would be up a flight of stairs. No biggie, right?

About a week into my freshman year I was given a heavy math textbook.

Now I need to carry that textbook up the stairs every even day. A few days later I started bringing a water bottle and the necessary notebooks up the stairs every odd day.

I also have P.E. and English on the same day, so I am usually exhausted when the day ends because of the large amounts of physical and mental strain.

The stairs are small, and easy enough to climb to the next floor, right? Wrong. Once you get up a floor or two, you start to get tired while climbing up, then you get to the third floor and while you aren’t completely exhausted, you’re already a  little winded. I have to experience that sensation every single day because I have newspaper on the third floor on even days.             

While hiking up stairs I see posters telling me who I should vote for and fundraisers I should attend, which only adds to my torment. I’m already thinking about how much I abhor my trudge up those stairs. I don’t need to think about anything else while I am grumbling under my breath about my misfortune.

My friends say that I’m being dramatic, but when I ask them if they have the misfortune of having more than one class on the third floor they say “No”.

After a few weeks here, I stopped dreading the climb and accepted it as an eventuality of life. I still despise climbing so many stairs every day, but I know I can’t avoid it.  I can only hope that I survive to see the day where I only have classes on the first floor.

I can only hope no other Cal students must suffer like me.