Over the past three months, I have established a morning routine. Wake up at 6:45 am, shower, dress and get ready for school by 7:30 am, and get to school by 7:45 am. I almost always got a good enough parking spot so that I usually don’t have to freeze walking from the parking lot to class. But coming back from winter break, my routine has been threatened.
     If I get to school at around 7:50 am, I end up right at the track, which means by the time I’ve walked to school, I’m dead tired. So this means I have to wake up at 6:30 am, just so I can get to school 40 minutes early, and this doesn’t work because then I just end up sitting in my car the whole time looking like an idiot. I don’t drive to school so I can walk another half-mile to get to school, I drive because I have to do a million other things that happen right after school. 
     So throughout the first week, I was wondering, “What the hell happened here?” As a junior, I’m not allowed to go into the back parking lot without getting my car keyed, so every day I make a trek from the track to school.
     Then one day, I was sitting in math class having a friendly chat with one sophomore who had just acquired his license. I told him that this time last year, there were no more than three people from my class driving to school daily, and to my surprise, he told me that there are triple that number  of sophomores driving now. So, I think I’ve found the problem. The problem is that over the years, the amount of sophomores driving to school daily was so little that in terms of parking, it went unnoticed. Now, with the combination of the fact that there are much older sophomores, along with the sheer size of the sophomore class, the parking situation is getting tricky. Now, I believe that there’s really only one way to solve the problem. Sophomores simply should not drive to school. There’s barely enough room for upperclassmen to park, so why make the situation worse?
     However, the overcrowding cannot be attributed to sophomores only, as many young juniors are starting to acquire cars, with at least four of my friends getting their licenses and driving to school on a daily basis.
     Sophomore Oliver Ramin, who got his license three months ago, says that he’s also felt the effect of students acquiring their licenses in large numbers, having to show up for school 20 minutes earlier. He believes that the solution to the overcrowding is to carpool, and if this doesn’t happen, “there will be a major issue, come May or April.”
     So take heed Tam High. Our parking is reaching critical mass, and it is up to all of you responsible sophomores to do the right thing and simply find another way to school.

This article originally appeared in the February 2010 issue.