This article hardly needs an introduction, as the title says it all. We all know the struggle of parking at UConn: if you’ve ever driven yourself to school here, even just once, you know that if you don’t get to the parking lots by 8:30 a.m., all hope is lost. You will be parking miles away and either waiting for the bus or walking far enough to drop all the pounds you’ve put on from stress eating about finding a parking spot.
I could rant and list tons of reasons why the parking is so awful… so I will. But in order to make this a little more interesting, I’ve enlisted the help of our friends from Scranton who also know a thing or two about the parking struggle.
So get comfortable on your throne of orange parking ticket envelopes and take a look: this is parking at UConn as told by The Office.
When you wake up 30 seconds later than you meant to and know this probably just cost you a parking spot.
Now that you’re finally in your car and on your way to campus, the struggle is truly just beginning. Every single light will turn red as you approach it and there is a 100% chance you’ll get stuck behind a driver who thinks a 45 mph speed limit sign actually means 30.
You’ve finally gotten to campus but you can see the long line of cars waiting to pull into the lot and you’re starting to realize you shouldn’t have slept in for those extra 30 seconds.
We’ve arrived at the most crucial part. You’re finally in the lot and now every car is racing down a different row to the back of the lot where the free parking spaces might be. Cars are swerving around pedestrians and it looks like a scene straight out of a Fast and the Furious movie.
Now the stress sweat is happening because you happened to drive down the same row as someone who’s decided that they’re not in any rush to get a parking space. You can see cars barreling down the other rows and the number of available spots is dwindling by the second.
Now there is one spot left. You see another car coming from the opposite direction and you know the other driver is eyeing it too. But you’re not going to let them have it.
Yup, they took it from you. If you had just gotten to the parking lot 30 seconds earlier, it would have been yours.
Rather than go to one of the far away parking lots, you’ve realized it would be easier to park in one of the garages. Which will cost money. Because your parking pass only covers commuter parking lots and not parking garages.
You may have spent $270 on a parking pass over the summer, but you forgot to add all the days you’d be paying $12 to park in the garage.
And don’t forget, all that extra time to go to the garage means you’re probably late to class.
But once in a while, you do get lucky. And this pretty much sums up how it feels when you somehow, someway, manage to get one of the very last available parking spots in the prime parking lot.
Good luck with parking this year, Huskies. May your chances of finding a parking space be high and the number of days you park in the garage be low.