Have you ever heard of Hill House? That far-distant building miles upon miles from Sarah Lawrence’s main campus? It\u2019s big and brooding, six floors, concrete walls, with boarded up windows and drills whirring outside every hour of the day. If you\u2019ve seen it, you\u2019re probably not going to forget it in a heartbeat. Less so for its appearance, and more for the excruciating walk to get there. Because trust me, it is excruciating.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only ten minutes, you might think, what\u2019s the big deal? But if you\u2019ve ever lived in Hill, you know that place is a sinkhole. It pulls you in. Maybe you had a plan to see friends, maybe you have a club meeting in the evening, perhaps you\u2019re simply hungry and want to have dinner at Barb. Well, no luck. Once you\u2019ve walked all the way to Hill and taken the elevator up, there\u2019s really no hope left. The door of your apartment slams shut behind you, and it may as well be that of a jail cell. Hill may only be ten minutes from the rest of campus, but it feels as disconnected as a separate country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, you may still be skeptical of my suffering. Sure, it\u2019s a little far, but the walk itself isn\u2019t too bad, right? Well, that\u2019s where you\u2019re wrong, and it isn\u2019t just that I simply dislike walking. On the contrary, I love walking; I\u2019ve even been known to champion a hike or two. But on all the many other walks I\u2019ve undergone in life, from the rainforests of Thailand to rolling German fields, never have I ever had a woman stick her head out a car window for the sole purpose of yelling at me. I can\u2019t say the same for the walk to Hill, however.<\/p>\n
Picture the scene. It is a sunny Sunday afternoon. I am wearing, admittedly, not very much\u2014a tank top and shorts because it is hot and I can do what I want\u2014and I am returning from Heimbold after a good 6 hours of painting. I\u2019m exhausted, my skin is splattered with paint. But despite all this, I\u2019m in a good mood, nodding my head along to the music emitting from my headphones. Car after car rushes by me, but I don\u2019t pay them much mind. That is until a car slows down as it passes me, and a woman sticks her head out the window.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I stare at her, she stares back, and before I know what\u2019s happening, she\u2019s screaming at me, her piggish face contorting in rage, words tearing from her in animalistic shrieks. What\u2026? My jaw hangs open; I probably look like I just walked headfirst into a glass wall. Then I blink and she\u2019s gone, her car disappearing up the road. I stop and gape at the spot where she once was.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What on earth just happened? Did I truly get slut-shamed? My eyes take in the rest of my surroundings, but there\u2019s no one else around, and her gaze was definitely on my face while all the angry yelling was happening. Thanks to the safety net of my headphones, I\u2019ll never know exactly what that woman said to me, but I got enough of a general gist to declare that the walk to Hill leaves a lot to be desired. Sure, I\u2019ve been catcalled and beeped at in various locations before, but to have someone stick out their head and yell at me? The walk to Hill is the only place such a thing has ever occurred. Case in point, that walk is well and truly fucked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Okay, so psychopathic women are hanging around, and once you\u2019re at Hill, there\u2019s little motivation to leave, but what other problems are there? Well, I\u2019m glad you asked. My least favorite thing about the walk to Hill, probably topping my dislike of being yelled at by strangers, if such a thing is even possible, is the narrowness of the sidewalk. My god, that thing is narrow. And no matter what time of day or night it is, it\u2019s guaranteed there will be someone else walking along it. Now, I\u2019m a speed-walker, I\u2019m a stuck-in-the-New-York-City-mindset type of walker. And yet every day I get stuck behind a snail-speed plodder, and there\u2019s simply nothing I can do about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I try my best to overtake, but with a path so narrow it’s impossible. Instead, I ride the slow walker\u2019s ass all the way to Barb before I can break off and make my speedy escape. It’s torturous, tormenting. Especially at 9 a.m. when I\u2019m already late for class. Maybe if there was some hope, I wouldn\u2019t feel so defeated by the whole situation, but in the same way I can\u2019t see a way around those exceptionally slow walkers, I cannot see a way around this problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, all in all, walking to Hill House sucks. And not in the typical, \u201curgh, this walk is so long\u201d way, but more so in \u201ca woman just yelled at me and I\u2019m stuck behind a slow walker and I\u2019m totally going to be late to class oh no oh no no no no no\u201d way. That isn\u2019t to say it\u2019s the worst thing in the world; I\u2019m sure walking on lava is more painful, or scaling Mount Everest. Nonetheless, to any rising sophomores, be warned: the hill leading up to Hill House may be far from the worst part of it all. Good luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have you ever heard of Hill House? That far-distant building miles upon miles from Sarah Lawrence’s main campus?…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":394900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-394899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115588379739488715","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}