Lamentations of a Shuttle Rider

I aspire to one day build something as lucrative and useless as Passio GO, Harvard’s bus-tracking system.

When I die, I want my body to be loaded into one of those weird, green-and-white Harvard electric shuttle buses. I want my decaying corpse to be propped upright on one of the logo-embroidered red seats, and for the driver to politely ask if I’m going to the Quad. The bus will then be pushed into the Charles River, and my resident dean (who, I imagine, will still look about 37 years old, as all resident deans do) will fire a flaming arrow into it from the riverbank. The bus, along with my mortal remains, will explode in a blaze of fireworks and mediocre wifi.

But to do that, Passio GO will first have to fucking tell us when the shuttle is going to show up. My mourners are going to be left huddled under the weirdly modern, weirdly-not-heated bus stop outside Mather, desperately checking the “Mather Express, Crimson Cruiser, Overnight” page just in case we’ve switched over to the evening schedule at 3pm on a Tuesday. Then they check Passio GO again, to be told, “actually, the only bus in service right now is a single Allston Loop shuttle at 100% capacity, fuck you.” 

I tried to be a shuttle rider. I really tried. After months of putting on a brave face and declaring, “actually, I think the walk from River East to the Yard is character-building,” I succumbed to the fact that I just got a raw deal on housing day, and that the only ‘character’ being built here is a new diagnosis in the DSM-5. So I made up my mind to start taking Harvard’s free, convenient shuttle to class every day — because I, like any good undergraduate, was going to take full advantage of the university’s resources and maximize my efficiency by cutting my commute down to a clean three-and-a-half minutes. 

Except, come to find out: the shuttle app is useless. Less than useless. I could physically be staring down the Mather Express at the corner of DeWolfe and Cowperthwaite, waving to that nice driver who always calls me ‘honey’ and offers to radio the Quad Express bus to wait outside Lamont as we pull up to the Inn — and Passio GO will be flipping me two middle fingers, adamant that not only are there no shuttles running on the route right now, but that there are no shuttles running on any routes, and for even daring to ask, the app will be reporting me to the Honor Council. 

At least I didn’t get quadded. At least I didn’t get quadded. At least I didn’t get quadded. At least I didn’t get quadded.