In high school there is a lot of growing up to be done. Unfortunately some of us only grow up in age and are stuck looking like 12-years-old because of our height. The worst part is high schools are not made for short people (especially those of us under 5 feet), so daily life is a bit more difficult for us. Here are just a few of the things that short people struggle with in high school:

Lockers:

What is the point of having a locker if you can’t reach it? Throughout middle school, classmates were constantly retrieving things from the top shelf of my locker for me. However, the fact that Stamford High does not offer a sufficient amount of time to get to our lockers or sufficient amount of space to put anything of use in them has been beneficial to me. All of my items are conveniently located in my backpack. And when it came to gym class and shoving my stuff into the tiny lockers in the girls’ locker room, I was lucky enough to get a middle locker my freshman year and a bottom locker my sophomore year. However, I can’t even imagine what would have happened if I had gotten the top locker.

Hallways:

Navigating the halls of Stamford High for someone who is “vertically challenged” is like being a minnow in a sea full of sharks. Most people don’t look down, so there is always the threat of being stepped on, tripped over, and run into (often followed by the statement, “Whoa! Didn’t see ya down there”). Sophomore, Andrea Hunt says, “I feel like I need to wear a sign that says ‘down here!'” Also getting to class on time is a problem when your short legs have to carry you up and down nine flights of stairs behind someone going at a pace slower than a turtle.

Seeing the Board in Class:

School is an institution of learning, but learning is kind of difficult when your view of the whiteboard is blocked by someone’s head all the time. Therefore we “vertically challenged” folks are forced to sit in the front of the class; otherwise going to school would be pretty pointless.

Driving:

This rite of passage for so many high school students is not so easy for those of us with the disadvantage of having short legs. In order to just reach the pedals, we have to push the driver’s seat up so far that we’re basically on top of the steering wheel, and there is always the issue of seeing over the hood of the car. Sometimes I feel like I need a booster seat just to drive.

Despite these struggles, there is one pretty awesome perk to being short: you get labeled “cute and adorable” for the rest of your life. We come with automatic cuteness. So I guess my message with all of this is take a moment, Stamford High students, and look down because that thing you just tripped over may have been a person.