As the new school year rolls around, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School high school students, primarily juniors and seniors, have the exciting opportunity to take classes at both their home school and Career Center. For those not familiar with the beautiful place that is Career Center, affectionately known by students as CC, it is a centrally located school that today offers 35 Advanced Placement courses, 17 Career Technical courses and 20 honors courses. However, all that glitters is not gold seeing as the school has one major flaw, parking.

The school’s three parking lots are each divided by which period students leave after. Seeing as there are 8 class periods and around 2,000 kids visiting daily, this process can understandably get very hectic.Though unfortunately, unless you ride the bus or are dropped off, you will automatically fall subject to the parking situation that for many reasons can easily become extremely stressful.

Prior to 2017, after handing over the hefty $115 fee for a parking sticker at your home high school, by simply bringing in the receipt you would receive your CC sticker. Along with that, if you were caught on campus without that colored, parking lot specific sticker, you were likely to get nothing harsher than a verbal warning.

This year however, not only do you have to hand over an additional $10 to park at CC but if you refuse to do so, after August 30, you will be fined $10 everyday that you continue park without one, a substantial difference from previous years.

The school year began with a negative response to the upcharge of parking that soon escalated to pure frustration when two days into school it was announced that no more 4th period stickers would be sold. A question that might be asked would be, “why is this such a problem?”

Well, it is not just because students adore the obnoxiously orange stickers that are synonymous with North Lot 2 and this period but more so, it is the known fact that the majority of students leave after fourth period CC. So obviously, to run out of spots for these students is not an occurrence that is going to go over well.

CC being as diligent as they are, solved this problem within the first week of school and thus should get the genuine thanks they deserve. So, kudos to the brave secretaries Ms. Anders and Ms. Little, who not only put up with a constant flow of agitated questioning regarding the crisis but also had to construct an over 100 person wait list to receive stickers. Also, to the fearless administration who had to pack all the second and third period students even closer than before in North Lot 1 in order to allow 4th period students more room to park. Lastly, to the teachers who now will have to direct traffic everyday into not one ferry parked lot… but two.

This brings us to the last point of parking contention that is the dreaded yet necessary phenomenon that is ferry parking, the tetris like space maximizing strategy that is now wreaking havoc on two of the three lots at CC. If you pull up around 7:50 or later, you are likely going to be parked in a ferry row.

If you cannot quite picture that phrase in your head, but have seen a can of sardines before, that image will suffice.

After all the spots fill up, three rows of cars are driven in between the lines of spots, yes, thus blocking in the spots.

This means, if you are parked in a ferry row and are not really in the mood to getting fiercly honked at, you better run to your car during class change in order to pull out as soon as humanly possible. Though if you were able to get to school with time to spare, you will be rewarded with the ability to only have to power walk to your spot, but then punishingly sit trapped waiting for said rows to pull out.

All in all, Career Center is a great place to take all the classes you did not even know existed, make new friends from all over the county while also learning how to drive both aggressively and defensively, an unlikely combination that is arguably possessed by CC students only who all know that if you cannot do both, you will probably get hit.