Throughout my college career, I have learned a lot of things, but one lesson that always seems to resurface every semester is to never leave my apartment or walk around campus without my umbrella on me. If you do leave your house or apartment without your umbrella, then go to the nearest store on or off campus and buy yourself one ASAP. Your Weather App may say that there’s no chance of rain today and it’s supposed to be clear all day, but trust me when I say this, don’t listen to that Weather App. Getting caught in the rain, especially during the first week of classes, can have some lasting side effects.
The first time I experienced getting caught in the rain was one of my core college memories so far. It was the Thursday right before the first football game of my freshman year. My friends and I knew we were going to get Third Deck no matter what so we decided to meet at 3:30 pm to pull our tickets together. Hypothetically, pulling our tickets was supposed to be a smooth and quick experience but that’s not exactly how it went. On the contrary, this was how I found out that things don’t always go according to plan.
Since I had gotten out of class early, I was the first one to arrive at the ticket pull booth. The sky was looking pretty cloudy and it felt really humid but I had checked the Weather App earlier that day to make sure I was in the clear. I didn’t want to get caught in the rain since I had not bought an umbrella yet. A couple of minutes went by and my friends slowly but surely started showing up after getting out of their classes. One of them ended up parking by Kyle Field because at this point, we weren’t aware of the towing situation in College Station. After around 30 minutes, all my friends except for my roommate had shown up. And and at this point, the clouds had gotten so much darker that I realized we were about to get rained on. Time was ticking by but we decided to wait for my roommate since we didn’t want to leave her out. At this point, it started pouring and we did our best at hiding under the little roof that Kyle Field offered. A couple of minutes later, my roommate showed up riding her bike with her backpack all drenched from the rain and I swear I could hear the theme of Pirates of the Caribbean playing in my head. We got our tickets quickly and then decided to make a run for our friend’s car while my roommate rode her bike back to the dorm. Thankfully, the car was still there when we got to the parking spot but after all that commotion, I had never heard silence so loud. Unfortunately, because of the rain soaking her backpack, my roommate ended up having to get a new laptop since the one she had got damaged by the water.
At the beginning of this semester, I seemed to have forgotten the lesson that I continuously learned during my freshman year. It was a cloudy day but it appeared like it wasn’t going to rain much. My friend, who I was having lunch with, had told me that it was supposed to rain when she usually walked to her class and that she had left her umbrella at home that day. I quickly checked the weather app and because it said that it wasn’t supposed to rain during the time I would be out walking around campus, I let my friend borrow my umbrella. I assumed that by the time it was my turn to go to class, the weather would have cleared up, but unfortunately for me, that was not the case. While walking to class, I only got some drops on me. But the real deal started when class got out. I heard loud thunder and as I walked to the door all I could see was rain pouring down. I hesitated but decided to walk to my car since there was no way for me to avoid getting soaked by the rain. That was such a challenging day because I had two meetings a couple of hours after my class. As I was driving home to put myself together, the inside of my car also became a victim of the rain because of me. Looking back on that day, I can now laugh about how I thought I could get away from the rain but in the moment, it completely ruined my day.
While I do admit that some of my funniest moments as a college student involve getting rained on because I had no umbrella, I do think that having one on hand would be wise. This way you at least have the option of choosing to stay dry or get drenched by the rain.