Snow Daze

From the top of the driveway to the garage and back up to the street

This weather is driving me nuts – it waits to start snowing in earnest until I’m getting ready to leave for school, regardless of what time of day that is.  I spent two hours Monday morning and an hour and a half this morning cleaning off my ridiculously long driveway (see photo collage), just so I could get my little front-wheel drive Cavalier up to the street.  There is no time of the year worse for commuters than the winter.  And of course the university’s policies on cancelling classes reflect one more way we non-traditionals are discounted or ignored.  My normal 35-minute drive to campus has been as long as two hours when the weather was nasty; the stress of driving in that kind of mess makes it feel like days of white-knuckling my way across a frozen bumper-car course. 

It’s not that I expect classes to be cancelled every time a white flake hits the ground.  I understand that missing even one class meeting can lead to as much as 10 percent of expected material being passed over in a course – in the case of those classes that only meet once a week especially.  But I wonder if the professors and administration ever think about how dangerous – or potentially expensive – it is to expect students who live off campus to make it to Clifton in awful weather.  I’ve lived in Cincinnati most of my life so I’m not unfamiliar with driving in the kind of slop we get in winter but now that I’m a mom I find that it’s a lot more nerve-racking – all those grown-up worries like paying for damages to my car if I slide into someone or off the road into a tree, or what would happen to my son if I were seriously injured (or killed).

I’ve got to wrap this up so I can start preparing my dogsled for the trip to Clifton – I have one evening class today, just in time to drive in rush hour both ways if I’m really unlucky and traffic is bad.  For all the commuters out there, non-traditional or not, drive safely and good luck this winter – here’s hoping we won’t have to miss any classes this quarter, unlike like the three or four days classes were cancelled last winter (which only happened after I was either already in Clifton or done for the day )

*** Danielle

— Postscript to the story:  It was snowing like it meant it when I left for class Wednesday afternoon, so I left early.  By the time I got to Northside, it had completely stopped – at least until it was time to head home.  Between the break I took at 5:15 p.m. and when class was dismissed at 6:45 p.m., it had snowed enough to cover the sidewalks and parking lots in Clifton, making for an exciting drive home.  Thankfully, the roads were well treated – for the most part – but none so nicely as my own, which is pretty far off the beaten path.  Today’s ridiculously cold temperatures will provide a different kind of challenge – how to stay warm outside without broiling in class.