Daily expedition through hallways requires serious survival skills

I suffer the effects of Naperville Central's dilapidated facilities long before setting foot in the building itself.

Getting dressed in the morning poses more of a problem than customary for a teenage girl. Stilettos? Not a wise idea when I'm making the perilous trek up and down that precariously steep, curiously humid three-flight stairwell. Unless I intend to plummet to a violent demise, I'll settle for flats today.

Wool sweater or sheer sundress? Neither. Our school's epic temperature disparity requires serious layering -- not for the sake of fashion but for survival. Call it a total redefinition of the term "school dress code." An antiquated heating and cooling system means I learn calculus in the tropics of the Amazon immediately before studying French in the Arctic Circle.

But hands down, Central's most glaring issue is overcrowding. A disorganized layout, aging facilities, and lack of campus space combined with the exponentially increasing number of students leaves Central bursting at the seams.

The administration converts cafeterias into classrooms and storage closets into offices, but the problem isn't about accommodating students during class -- the problems arise between classes.

You might liken passing periods to six-minute-long perpetual violations of personal space. The bell sounds after each hour, a battle cry signaling literally thousands to begin their frenzied crusade to their next class.

Exiting your classroom means relinquishing yourself to the crowd already storming the hallways -- people who grope you, grab you, elbow you, trip you, breathe on you, sneeze and cough on you, hack away at your arms with their 75-cent laminated Trapper Keepers from Office Depot.

Naive underclassmen, unversed in the ways of maneuvering through congested corridors, drag their feet and make it a point to walk in Spartan phalanx formation to span the entire girth of the hallway, though the occasional determined soul can force his way past.

But no amount of haste or hurry can triumph over Central's doomed infrastructure.

During your sprint from English to chemistry, one is certain to encounter a handful of obstacles.

Handrails wobble and break. Drinking fountains gush metal-flavored water. Bathrooms are missing stall doors. Rain outside means rain inside -- three cheers for ceiling leaks and lower-level flooding, anyone? Students emerge from P.E. perspiring more heavily than usual; our fieldhouse suffers from poor ventilation.

Did I mention the asbestos underneath the third-floor carpeting?

Outdated amenities plague the district as a whole, but Central, without a doubt, bears the brunt of District 203's facility crisis.

All I want is to wear stilettos.