One minute until the bell and the kids in the class are starting to get antsy.

Forty-five seconds until the bell goes and the room is filled with the sound of folders getting shoved back into their homes and backpacks being zipped.

Twenty-three seconds until the bell rings and the students start to stand up, chairs scraping against the floor making black skid marks from the legs.

Ten seconds until the bell sounds and the kids start to line up at the door anxiously waiting to be released.

Then the bell rings and it’s a mad dash to get out of the stuffy classroom, but getting out of the class is the first challenge, now you have to fight through the cramped hallways.

George Ranch houses 595 freshman, 520 sophomores, 489 juniors, and 460 seniors along with about 145 staff members, making that a total of 2209 people in the school.  With only five minutes to rush from one side of the building to the other, it can get a little difficult to be on time. Then you add all of the other kids trying to get to class as well, and it can be more than a little difficult. But unlike at the the junior high, students in high school are allowed to use the back stairwells.

“[I use] the back [staircase] because otherwise you get stuck behind people who have conversations, and that’s annoying,” senior Isabelle Antes said. “And the one day that you go through the front hallway there’ll be a tardy sweep, and you’ll have just stepped in the door and [the teacher will] be like, ‘today I’m going to be a stickler and today I’m shoving you out’. And you’ll have to go get the magical tardy slip. So yes, [I use] the back hallways because they’re faster.”

With the back halls you can dart around and avoid the huge jam that always finds its way to Main Street. However, there are other factors that make your journey around school just a little more difficult such as lunch, rerouted classes, tardy sweeps, and needing to use the bathroom.

Lunch time forces the back hall users to go out into the front and get caught up in the lunch rush; some people trying to leave the cafeteria and some trying to get in.

“Instead of going the back way I have to go to the front; […] everyone is trying to get out [of the cafeteria], and more people are trying to get in— it just doesn’t work,” sophomore Demi Sadek said. “I kind of just wait for everyone to go. Then I go in.”

But what about a day when you have to be in a different class that isn’t your norm?

They, the teachers, tell you the day before that the class will be held in a different room and to not be late. The next day comes and you forget the announcement the teacher made and you show up to a closed door and a note hanging from a small piece of tape. What happens then?

“I mutter under my breath (a long string of not school appropriate words mind you) and scuttle towards the place we are supposed to be,” Antes said.

Knowing where your class is each day can help with the transition from class to class. And taking the back halls can shave seconds and maybe even minutes off your trip to class.