Freezing by A Block, Eighty Degrees by Lunch

By Lily Fang

“Next week’s going to be a roller coaster,” my friend’s Alexa announces over FaceTime while she debates whether she should pack shorts for HOSA.

That one sentence captures March in North Carolina perfectly. In the span of a week, temperatures can swing from below freezing to eighty degrees again, leaving everyone confused, underprepared, and somehow always carrying a jacket they may or may not need. In a weird way, the unpredictability of the weather mirrors the emotional whiplash many juniors are feeling during second semester. One day everything is manageable, and the next, everyone is one missing assignment away from a complete meltdown. At this point, the length of my sleeves seems to correspond directly with the number of crashouts over Dr. Stefan’s physics class on any given day. 

For some students, though, the weather has not been much of a disruption. Junior Alisha Varshney said it has not affected her routine much because she usually stays indoors. Still, like many students trying to survive the cold morning and warm afternoons, her go-to outfit is “a sweatshirt and an oversized T-shirt” with sweatpants. Even with the constant shifts, Alisha says she enjoys the contrast, explaining that “the fact it’s so warm in the afternoons” while still cold at other times “makes me so happy.”

Senior Soham Kela, however, has had a mixed experience with March weather. “It’s been horrible,” he said, pointing to pollen as the main problem. “The pollen has been killing me, and I can’t go out without sneezing.” Still, he admitted the changing temperatures have also made it fun to be outside again after winter. When it comes to dressing for unpredictable days, he said he usually wears “a hoodie with a shirt underneath.” The back-and-forth between beautiful weather and brutal pollen has affected his mood too: “Whenever I can step outside, I don’t want to go back in. But whenever I’m inside, I want to go back outside.”

As I have sat outside Panera Bread writing this for the past half hour, a layer of pollen has coated my keyboard. I think it’s time to go back inside, but the sun is so nice, even if the breeze is almost chilly. Maybe that contradiction is the best way to describe March in North Carolina: warm and cold, inviting and inconvenient, all at the same time.