High School Legends

On my High School campus, there was a clock tower that functioned as one of the main campus landmarks (even if it didn't exactly function as a clock). The clock tower is maybe two stories tall at the most, with three clock faces, each purporting a different time, and has a hollowed out walkway underneath it, just for the fun of it (I'm assuming). During most students' four years at the school, the clock tower is a symbol of our power as individuals, the pain we as people must suffer through, and a sort of sheer otherworldly terror.

One of the few man-made objects large enough to be
seen from space! Or from a Google Maps satellite, at least.

The clock tower is a symbol of power because it's so freaking huge. Underclassmen tend to hover around it for a sense of guidance and protection. Before school starts, during lunch break, and when school gets out, there is a huge mass of young 14/15-year-old kids swarmed around there, doing nothing in particular. It's very loud.

It's also visible around the main area of the campus, and it gives all those students under its faces a false sense of the correct time. Whoever designed this campus was wise, tricking us into feeling we were in control because we thought we knew what time it was.

Night-time view of the clock tower,courtesy
of my good friend Christy and her phone.

Because the clock tower is, obviously, a clock tower, it's also a symbol of pain. Clocks remind everyone of the amount of sleep they're not getting, especially at a prestigious IB school where half of the overcrowded population is taking college-level courses. Clocks remind students of every moment they're in class, waiting to leave. Clocks remind people of everything we want to do but never seem to have the time for. It's a painful memory. And that clock tower is on our school logo.

But for most students at my high school, the clock tower is a ginormous mountain of superstition. Who decided we needed a strange looking clock tower on our campus? Why do all the faces say different times, and which of them is right (or all they all wrong together)? How would one get into the clock tower to fix it? And why in heck is there a little walkway arch beneath it all?

The little archway has been the primary source of confusion since the school was opened in 19-Whenever. It's used by clubs as a shady place to set up tables to collect fundraiser money, but when not under the protection of a school-sanctioned organization, few people dare to venture there. A prevailing theory is that, when one is in the clock tower opening, glass panes will suddenly slam shut, and the area will fill with water, drowning the poor unfortunate student. Another theory suggests that bars will slide down, locking the student in there for school-related torture all week.

Few students actually believe these myths, but who would tempt fate by walking under the clock tower unnecessarily, or under a ladder (or tempting any other well known superstition)? Such is the case with the school Clock Tower. Ridiculous graduation speeches aside, the one primary thing all students coming out of my high school will remember is the imagery summoned by the thought of the sketchy clock tower. 

(And how much free time we had on our hands. Man, those were the days.)