WOODBURY — For the 20 minutes before the bell rings at 7:25 a.m., the Nonnewaug student parking lots are not for the weak.
The scene is chaotic and scattered with cars going all different directions. Drivers of diesel trucks assert themselves with loud roars. Parents scurry to drop off their kids before they get stuck in traffic. Staff members Andrew Zielinski and Mark Strumolo shout to try to manage the mess.
This situation might bother even an experienced driver. But some of these kids have only had their license for a couple of days or weeks.
“It’s very stressful,” senior Billy Calabrese said. “There’s a lot of cars parked and it’s very packed in.”
Some students have been so anxious about the parking in the morning that they leave their houses earlier than necessary.
“If I’m running late in the morning, it makes my morning even more stressful because I already try to leave my house early,” junior Ada Gorka said, “but then if I’m running late, I’m more stressed and it ruins my morning.”
However, not all students see the parking lot as a battlefield. Junior Grace Rubacha says she’s confident on the road.
“Honestly, I have no anxiety about it,” Rubacha said. “I kind of blindly trust everyone because I have a really tiny car and I can whip that thang.”
Zielinski, who teaches ag mechanics and helps monitor the parking lot in the morning, agrees the parking lot isn’t always as bad as it seems.
“I think it goes fairly smoothly given that there’s a lot of people coming in in the morning,” Zielinski said.
A consequence that stresses students out even more is that if they come in late without a doctor’s note, they will have lunch detention that day.
“I do think the lunch detention does bring a lot of pressure on people in the morning because we already worry about being late and now [we’re worrying about] getting lunch detention for it,” Gorka said.
On the bright side, even with the amount of cars leaving and coming, all Nonnewaug High School students and staff get in and out safely.
“It’s amazing what we push through this campus in a 15-minute window,” assistant principal Declan Curtin said. “The amount of cars, buses, and people – [it] is a lot going on in those 15 minutes, and we do understand that some of our drivers are new drivers who have just gotten their licenses, which is more of a reason why people need to be respectful and understanding.”
