PSA from Great Lakes’ students: Yes, we think it’s cold

"Oh, aren’t you from around Chicago? Shouldn’t you not be cold?”

Whenever I hear someone say this, I want to scream. There seems to be this common idea that students from the Great Lakes region are “immune” to the cold. I mean, it only makes sense. We have dealt with sub-zero, polar vortex winters. We have faced mountains of snow closing us in. And some of us have dared to “Polar Plunge” into our lakes when it is February.

However, we are not immune!

When you see us bundled in our thick jackets, hats, scarves, gloves, cotton socks, and boots, it is because we have suffered.

Have you ever waited in negative 20-degree Fahrenheit weather for your bus because your school district never cancels? Have you ever walked through the streets of Chicago as the trademark winds of the city slap across your cheeks or walked outside your house to get mail as the cold tries to take you in?

Once your feet, hands, and almost every joint in your body have become frozen in polar vortex conditions, you view the cold with quite some hostility. You never again want to undergo that pain from your middle school days that resulted in your toes and fingers being frozen all day just because "only LOSERS dress appropriately for the weather" (sorry, Mom) and you decided that wearing a thin sweater and silver ballet flats was the move.

If you really think I’m gonna go skipping out of my dorm at 7:30am in merely a little jacket, jeans, and canvas tennis shoes just because it’s only 30-degrees Fahrenheit out, you are absolutely wrong. I would much rather wear my 500 layers and sweat while walking up another steep hill than go back to practicing the elementary school ritual of kneeling close to the ground at the bus stop in hopes that the ground's warmth would enter my body.

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