Tuesday, February 18, 2014

The Fall of Snow Days

I live in the Northeast, which means this winter we have experienced snow storm after snow storm.  Because most people (not students, 80-90% of med students live on campus) that don't live at my school must drive to get there, they were pretty liberal with snow days (especially because last year, several students got into car accidents on the way to our biochem mini board).  From what I can tell, the rule of thumb has been: if it is actively snowing, and the roads have snow on them- cancel school.  We get a delay if they think perhaps the extra time will allow the salt to work its magic.  I'm pretty sure the administration (or whoever makes the snow calls) is starting to regret their decision and has thus changed the snow day rules to something along the lines of: "If a four wheel drive vehicle can make it to school, everyone else must suck it up."  I drive a Honda Civic.   

Today it was actively snowing, all major roads had snow on them, and the weather was expected to get better in a couple hours.  Seems like a a 2 hour delay to me.  Right?  WRONG!!  I don't go to class, but we had a Community and Preventative Medicine Exam this morning at 9 so I got up early to study, and hoped that the snow would at least give me a couple more hours at home.  I held out for as long as I possibly could, convinced they would post a delay.  I left for school only when I knew I would have just enough time to de-snow my car and drive to school at a moderate pace (assuming the roads would be decent since we didn't have a delay).  Decent roads what not what greeted me.  I drove my butt to  school in full snow fall, rolling through stop signs on the hills out of fear that my car would not continue to move forward if I came to a complete stop. When I arrived at school (15 minutes late for the exam), I saw a herd of other commuters who were late as well.  You would think they would at least wait 15 minutes before starting the exam right?  NOPE!!  Or perhaps, recognize that the people walking in with snow in their boots and car keys still in hand might need say an extra 15 minutes for the exam (we only had 30 minutes to take the test).  WRONG AGAIN!!  I'm now convinced our CPM course director either lives in his office or teleports to school.

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