Every Tuesday and Thursday, I sat in my car between classes.
My roommate thought I was studying.
My mother thought I was eating lunch.
A classmate once saw me in the parking lot and said, “You are so disciplined.”
I thanked him because explaining the truth felt unnecessarily intimate for eleven thirty in the morning.
I was not studying.
I was sitting in silence with the doors locked and the seat tilted back.
College was loud in ways nobody mentioned during orientation.
The lecture halls were loud. The cafeteria was loud. The hallways were filled with people greeting one another as if they had all been separated during a natural disaster.
Even the library had whispering, typing, chairs scraping, and one person opening a bag of chips with the determination of a bomb squad.
By the time my first class ended, my brain felt crowded.
So I went to my car.
I took off my shoes. I ate crackers from the glove compartment. Sometimes I closed my eyes. Sometimes I stared through the windshield and watched students hurry toward buildings they were already late to enter.
For forty minutes, nobody needed anything from me.
Then a campus security officer knocked on my window.
I nearly left my body.
He asked if everything was all right.
“Yes,” I said too quickly. “I’m just taking a break.”
He looked at the blanket on the passenger seat, the snacks in the cup holder, and the tiny battery powered fan clipped to the dashboard.
“You have a whole apartment in here.”
“Studio apartment,” I corrected. “The bathroom is inconvenient.”
He laughed and told me I was allowed to rest there. He only wanted to make sure I was safe.
After that, I stopped feeling embarrassed about my parking lot retreat.
My car was not evidence that I could not handle college.
It was how I handled college.
I returned to class calmer, fed, and slightly less interested in yelling at anyone who breathed too loudly.
That seemed educational enough.
Grounding thought: Needing a quiet place does not mean you are avoiding life. Sometimes stepping away for a few minutes is exactly what allows you to return.