This semester has been…something. I’d like to say it’s senioritis but I’m not sure if I can attribute the amount of bad luck I’m having to senioritis. So far in the semester, these past two weeks in particular, I’ve been having so much random bad luck and I’m really over it. Maybe writing about my series of unfortunate events will let me finally move past my bitterness. Probably not, but here I go anyways.
I’ve already written an article about the first big instance of bad luck that I experienced this semester: getting sick in Disney World. When I first feel like I’m getting sick I do everything I can to prevent it. I take extra Vitamin C, I drink tea, I take cold medicine, and I try to go to sleep early. The problem was I didn’t have any medicine with me at all in Florida and I couldn’t exactly go to sleep early. It didn’t help that I was staying at a Disney resort and my only access to cold medicine was the hotel gift shop. I didn’t even end up buying the medicine I needed because it was $17 and I wouldn’t have been able to take it back with me on the plane. Instead I bought Benadryl and overpriced cough drops and just did my best to enjoy Disney World while suffering from a cold.
Another unfortunate thing that I experienced was getting a parking ticket. Yes, technically I deserved the ticket because I know I wasn’t supposed to be parked where I was parked. But I was parked there for less than 3 minutes and the police officer who was writing the ticket literally handed it to me as I was getting in my car to leave. He was also not very friendly and wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to talk to him. I tried to appeal the ticket but my appeal was denied, so I had to pay $50 which was not fun.
My next stroke of bad luck happened a few weeks ago. For those of you who don’t know, when it comes to some Broadway shows, there is a thing called the lottery. You can enter the lottery everyday, for every show, and if you win you can buy 1 or 2 tickets at a very discounted price. For about a month I had been entering everyday for a musical I really want to see called Hadestown, and on one Tuesday morning, I won. The show I won for was the next day matinee show, and I was so excited until I realized I had a midterm on that day and wouldn’t be able to make it to New York City in time. If I wanted to go, I had to buy the tickets that day by 4 pm, so I spent most of the day debating whether or not I should skip my midterm. In the end I decided against skipping because my cousin, who would’ve gone with me, also had a midterm she couldn’t miss. Needless to say I was heartbroken and was regretting my decision to ever go to college. But wait, it gets worse. The next morning I woke up to find out that my professor had rolled her ankle and MY MIDTERM WAS POSTPONED. I was so angry and sad all over again, realizing that I could’ve gone to NYC after all and not missed anything important.
A week after that happened I had a stroke of good luck and I won the lottery for a different Broadway show, Hamilton. So, my mom and I went to New York City on Halloween. Everything was perfect until the train ride home. Our train kept going really slow at times and we were confused until the conductor announced that there were signals down because of the weather. It was a really windy and rainy night so it made sense. Our train was originally scheduled to get to our stop at 12:30 am and now it was going to be even later, which wasn’t great because we had a 2 hour drive home from the train station. We were two stops away from our station when the conductor announced that the next stop was going to be the last one because there were trees and wires down on the tracks ahead. At this point it was almost 2:00 am. We had no choice but to get off at a stop that wasn’t ours. We then had to stand outside in the pouring rain to wait for an uber to bring us to the station where our car was. I wish this was the end of the bad luck. I’ve never been so scared and anxiety-ridden as I was driving home that morning. It was dark and it was raining and I’m not exaggerating when I say I could not see a thing. The rain was coming down in sheets and big trucks kept passing me, causing more water to splash against my windshield. It was a very scary and long ride home. Once we got back to school it was almost 4:30 am and we had to park and walk up a hill in the pouring rain to get to my room. We ended up getting 2.5 hours of sleep that night because I had an early class and my mom had to leave to get home to go to work. It’s just my luck that the first part of our day was amazing but the ending could not have been worse.
My next stroke of bad luck is on a much smaller scale than my previous ones, but probably a lot more relatable. Just this week in my Spanish class, after she had returned some graded work, my professor told us to clear our desks of everything and make sure all our notes were away. She then proceeded to pass out our “examen.” I had an internal panic attack. I definitely had no idea what was going on and didn’t even know there was a test. It ended up being fine, as we just had to write a composition, but I didn’t like the feeling of being caught off guard like that. I have no idea how I forgot that I had a test because I am usually on top of things like that. Maybe I was too frazzled with all the other bad luck happening in my life.
Something that happened to me a couple days ago was also on the smaller scale of inconveniences, but still annoying. I have a little vial of tea tree oil that I use sometimes on my nose piercing when it’s irritating me. Tea tree oil is not cheap. I paid almost $9 for a bottle that is less than .5 oz. I don’t know how it happened but the other morning I was sitting at my desk after using it and I knocked it over. Thankfully it didn’t get on my laptop or my phone, but it got all over my mini calendar that I use. Not all of it spilled but a good portion of it did and I can’t stop thinking about how much money I just lost right there. Also, it made my room smell very strongly of tea tree oil which isn’t exactly a bad smell, but it’s also not something I want to keep smelling continuously. My calendar is also permanently stained with the oil and the smell, which is disappointing.
Here’s to hoping my bad luck doesn’t continue this semester.