Have you seen the construction on Interstate 271? Man, it is ridiculous. It’s insane. It really messes with my daily routine and typical morning commute that I think little of because I am so accustomed to driving via highway to desired far-away locations on a regular basis.

I take that back. I’m not sure if the construction on I-271 North is that ridiculous. For all I know, that stretch of the highway has been under construction since its conception. I don’t know much about the highway, but I’m learning. I’m learning because I’ve had to use it to drive places a lot recently.

I realize that sounds dumb. Everyone drives on the highway. Everyone knows how to merge and keep left and take an exit. But until a few weeks ago, I had only mastered a five-mile strip of the highway that connects my house to the Old Navy and the pet store.

I have an internship in Akron for the summer. The first night I stayed up late to MapQuest it. My mom had me take my sister with me while I drove 15 minutes through our city to find some highway nearby that I had heard of and whose existence I was vaguely aware of, but whose actual location was more than fuzzy in my mind. With the help of my sister, Magellan, I located the rumored highway.

I found the highway. I woke up the next morning and got ready for my first day.

But every time I merge onto the highway, I feel as if I’m walking into a room with a bunch of strangers who all know each other but couldn’t care less about me. I feel as if I have to prove myself. I don’t like the look of the green car next to me and the sport utility vehicle behind me is definitely angry at me. I might not be able to see the driver’s face, but I am positive that he does not like that I just merged in front of him and am maintaining proper speed.

Even so, I like the drive. I like guaranteeing myself a solid hour of singing aloud to Taylor Swift or Missy Higgins without the fear of criticism from other passengers for my musical tastes. No one yells at me when I answer my phone or put on another coat of ChapStick in the rearview mirror.

I almost died last week, though. I was driving in the left lane on I-271 South (maybe you’ve heard of it) when a silver SUV on my right started swerving right at me. If not for my cat-like reflexes, someone would have had to peel me off the road. But I managed to dodge the vehicle, and as I did so a shocking choice expletive beginning with an “f” and ending in “er” issued from my mouth. I was quite surprised by my word choice, not because it wasn’t fitting, but because even in the heat of the moment, I was able to identify the man in that silver SUV based on this tiny behavior. So while I continued south on I-271, I marveled at my ability to avoid disaster and articulate such a claim.

I think about cops pulling me over all the time and wonder what they’d say if I told them I was new to the area and flashed my MapQuest printouts. I wonder if they’d look closely at the dates and see that I’d mapped out my route home from Akron about a month ago and am not, therefore, “new” to the area. I wonder if they’d buy my excuse at being a paranoid driver. That much is true.

My senior project caused similar grief. I remember driving to my senior project, about 25 minutes from my home, for the first time the night before my first day at the end of high school. I had to find the highway and was terrified to drive that short stretch. Driving past that old exit now makes me feel stupid. That’s where I spent hours converting polka music from vinyl to MP3s in real time. I can think of few genres of music that I would hate to listen to in real time more than polka.

But those days have passed and now I’m looking at a brighter future. Learning to navigate a few more highways is the first step in navigating America and then the rest of the world and its neighboring planets. At this rate, I’ll be working for MapQuest in a few decades. And there’s got to be some sort of scholarship money for the first student to map another planet.

Kristine Gill is a junior newspaper journalism major and columnist for the Summer Kent Stater. Contact her for directions from Kent to Mentor at [email protected].