Lately I have been feeling like there are student drivers everywhere. Maybe it is because school has started and there are those kids eager to start driving. All I know is that sometimes when I see them I want to apologize for my driving, but then I really begin thinking about it and just decide that I don’t need to apologize.

I remember the days when I was a student driver. I was also so eager to get behind the wheel and have some freedom out on the road. Of course, I had to drive around with an adult, which was kind of a bummer. They were determined to teach me the proper ropes when it came to driving, but at the same time I knew there was some relief that I have a person being paid to teach me how to drive. I can still hear my parents going:

“Watch your speed”

“Watch the car in front of you”

“Stay in this lane”

“You need to merge now”

“Brake, Brake, BRAKE!”

Driving was always so exciting, but it was also terrifying. Seeing older high school students and college students driving so recklessly was scary. They would:

never fully stop at stop signs

tailgate so badly

switch lanes recklessly

gun it through a yellow lights

take turns on “two wheels”

squeeze so many people in the car,

eat while driving

change while driving

be on the phone while driving

just do so many ridiculous things while driving

Here I am, now a senior in college, and well those ridiculous things are not so ridiculous to me anymore. I don’t feel as if I need to apologize for doing those things as a driver. I mean just look around, people do those all the time while driving. Being a college student sometimes you just don’t have time to sit down and eat, so you have to eat while driving. Also, sometimes life is busy and you’re in a rush, so driving fast, switching lanes, and gunning through yellow lights are necessarily. When there are no cars around, there is no need to fully stop at stop signs. I just feel at this point in my life that I can’t look at people who do things like this and think negatively of them.

Same goes for those student drivers out there. Don’t get mad or hate us drivers for driving like this because give yourself a few years and you will be just like us.

Soon, student drivers will find themselves cutting off other people in order to get somewhere faster. Soon they will be the ones shoving food in their face before work, internships, class, or well anything.

With all of this being said, here is me not apologizing for rolling through a stop sign when it was the student driver’s turn. They have to learn sooner or later. Within a few years, they will be me.