I sit anxiously in the hard desk chairs as sweat dribbles down the back of my neck and my lower back begins to stick to my shirt. Finally, the bell rings and I can be free from the inferno, also known as known as math classroom 3020. However, as I get up to bolt out of the classroom, something pulls me back.
Oh yeah, my legs.
They seem to be permanently glued to the chair. Heat has fused them to the uncomfortable reminder that I am not done with school for the year. After moments of struggling, I finally pry my skin from the chair and run from the all-encompassing heat to…more heat.
Even though outside there is still a chill in the air, these days I dress in shorts and a tank top merely because the classrooms are desertlike. At the start of second semester, Dodig notified us that the air conditioning would be turned on May 20th. At the time, that seemed like a reasonable date.
Now, I have no recollection of anything I learn throughout the day. All I think about is the overwhelming heat. The Social Studies classroom is essentially an oven and I am the turkey roasting inside. My brain is cooked like giblets.
Even when freed from the confining heat in the classrooms, I find walking through the hallways not much better. There, the walls seem to close in on the pack of students attempting to walk to class, despite their heat exhaustion.
But sometimes the heavens grant us a gift, in the form of a classroom the temperature of a freezer. My Spanish classroom is one of these gracious gifts. I walk in everyday and smile at the cool air against my skin. After a long day of being trapped in the heat, I welcome the coolness with open arms.
It is shocking to think one classroom could soar above body temperature and another plunge all the way down to polar degrees. Staples High School has somehow figured out how to defy the odds of a heating and cooling system to make some rooms extraordinarily heated and others frightfully chilly.
