I always hear so much about May flowers, but April showers on campus mean something else entirely.

April showers mean dreary walks of drudgery between classes, dripping backpacks and soaked pant legs. They mean bleary mornings that require excessive amounts of coffee.

They also result in a fascinating phenomenon that I have noticed on campus: slow walking.

It’s almost as if students have a certain level of pride that must be maintained, a level of pride that cannot tolerate the demeaning act of running. I’ve experienced this myself — I found myself caught in a soaking rain without a rain jacket or umbrella, since I didn’t check the weather and left them at home.

Did I run to class? Of course not. I walked leisurely, as if to say: “This? Is it raining? I hardly noticed.”

Pride salvaged, I dripped into class and soggily sat through the lecture with complete indifference. On the outside. On the inside, I was squirming madly and regretting my lack of foresight.

I feel like this phenomenon is intimately related to the students who wear shorts and t-shirts in the middle of winter. I am not one of those people, but I wonder about their thought process.

I assume it goes something like this:

“It isn’t that cold today. Better throw on the shorts to let everyone know it doesn’t affect me. I eat days like this for breakfast.”

This is the intended effect, but I feel that the true inner thoughts of the person go more like this:

“It may not be – 30, but this isn’t shorts weather. I severely regret my decision, but I can’t let anyone else know that.

I don’t know what it is, but rain seems to bring out my slowest saunter. The water slowly creeping up my pant leg makes a convincing argument to speed things up a bit. But my pride is doing a pretty good job of keeping me slow.

Gotta stay fly.