The Commuter Corner author shares the story of her first day back to campus for the fall semester and the unexpected obstacle she faced just minutes after leaving her house. (File Photo/Daily Campus)
Heading out the door on Aug. 28, I had to keep telling myself that everything would be okay. The summer had been so peaceful, but life was about to get hectic. I had just gotten an internship that was going to take a good amount of my time away from school, so I was a little worried. But, I wasn’t going to fail. At anything. Ever. I was going to succeed. I was going to be so great, UConn wouldn’t know what hit it.
By the time I got in my car, I was totally believing it too. I had pumped myself up for this busy semester, and convinced myself that not a thing could go wrong. I was set. My future was certain. I would get straight As, and rock this internship that I was actually enjoying, and still have free time to hang out with friends. Even if complete success started slipping from my grasp, my spirit would not be broken.
My car, however, totally would be.
Not even kidding. On the first day of school, after having just pulled off my road, the engine started making this huge clunking noise. The car barely moved on what is a pretty busy road, which on its own is dangerous, and then the “Check Engine” light came on. But it’s not the normal “Check Engine” light I’d grown used to on my other car. It’s blinking.
For those of you who don’t know, you can get by when the check engine light comes on. I’ve driven many cars where it’s just a cute decoration on the dashboard that you just ignore. From that statement, you can probably guess where I’m at financially, but I’ll get to the main point here: when it starts blinking, that means something bad happened. Like, really bad.
Needless to say, I was just down the road so I rolled it back home, thinking I would rather die with $12 in my wallet than get towed two minutes down the road and be out a hundred bucks. (I also live right by a hospital, so the response time would be quick). When my dad looked at it, several important parts broke. Just like my motivation.
In the end, I only missed one class, which is actually really lucky considering I live 40 minutes away and had to locate another vehicle to use. Thankfully, my family was able to work around me and loan me one of their cars, but it was definitely a crappy situation. No problems all summer, so yeah, great way to start out my school year.
I want to end this article on a good note, like how I choose my reaction when bad things happen, but I feel like that’s sentencing myself to some more doom. I’ll just end it with wishing you guys a better semester than me. There, how can that go wrong?
Hannah Desrosiers is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at hannah.desrosiers@uconn.edu.
