As you get older, there are many ages of your life that are considered milestones.

• 13: Your first year as a teenager
• 16: It is finally possible for you to get your license and cruise around without your parents!
• 17: No curfew, so stay out as late as you want
• 18: Legal adulthood!

The list goes on. Unfortunately, at the unremarkable age of 15, I feel like I am caught in between milestones in a horrible limbo of teen neglect. Unnoticed and frustrated, I feel like I should be putting all of my energy into achieving the big one-six: getting my license.

One of the unique things about the Uni community is that our driver’s education is not directly linked to just our school. Students sign up and take classes with people from other schools.

However, because of this disconnect from the normal environment in which teachers, parents, and classmates constantly remind you of obligations and necessities, many people do not complete driver’s ed with quite the speed they would like.

In my case, I took driver’s ed over the summer. There was a smattering of Uni students and quite a few people from other schools, but the thing that I had been told about the most was the teacher: Mr. Hausman. He has taught almost every Uni student the basics about driving (remember to stay out of the no zones!).

Part of his fame is the fact that getting the state-required six hours with an instructor with him is one of the most difficult tasks on the planet. As previously mentioned, I took the class over the summer, and as the deadline to my birthday drew closer, I realized last week that I had only one hour with an instructor.

So for the past month, almost every day after track practice I tried to quietly stalk the halls of Kenney Gym to try and catch Mr. Hausman. It never seemed to work, though. I left too early, I showed up too late, there’s no class that day, and the list goes on. I was determined, though, to get my license on my 16th birthday.

Finally one day when the track team came back to Kenney from a meet, I saw his JR’s Driving School car (easily recognized by the giant yellow sign perched atop it). I seized my opportunity and frantically scribbled a note with my purpose and phone number listed on it. I stuck it under the windshield wiper as I left for my house, hoping that this last-ditch attempt would work.

Two days later I got a voicemail, and this weekend I completed two more hours. I am now halfway to my goal, and feeling a lot better about it.

This experience made me realize that when dealing with people whose elusiveness is renowned, you have to not only be very creative but determined in your efforts to get through to them.