Simple yet significant, the school hallway is a confusing domain. Surely you’ve figured out the quickest way to make it from a C-wing Spanish class to a ground level art class, but what happens when that plan back fires and you are forced to use the main hall? Easy. Follow common courtesy rules and travel will be a breeze.

Let’s start off with common travel courtesy. You drive on the right side of the road; therefore, you should walk on the right side of the hall. Being thrown against the C-wing’s glass-shard-covered wall is never a great way to start, or end, the day. To help others resist the possibility of that happening, stay to your right side. And, when you bump shoulders with someone, you apologize. This rule was not created to be broken by high school students. It is common courtesy to say you are sorry for bruising another person’s shoulder. Just because you are in a hurry, does not mean you are excused from a quick exchange of apologies between you and your victim.

Stairs are the main culprit in slowing down your route. When four of the largest classes to go through the school attempt to travel on one staircase, congestion is a given. Besides having to maneuver around the groups of people at the top of the stairs, there are also the groups at the bottom of the stairs. If you stand in these groups, move a couple feet into the locker banks and the main staircase speed might greatly increase.

Along with blocking the stairs, do not block locker banks. If your favorite place to awkwardly stand in large groups is at someone’s locker, move. Your body could draw the fine line between someone being late to class or not.

If you like to carry around a backpack that doubles your weight, do not make sudden movements. If you turn around to talk to a friend while an innocent third party is walking by, you will feel bad about knocking them into the trash cans on the side of the locker banks.

If you are fortunate enough to be the renter of a top locker, respect the person below you. Nothing hurts worse than a fat math book landing on your head. To prevent the awkward moment when you get to your lockers at the same time and neither of you will make the first move towards your lock, meet an understanding with your locker mate. Whoever has the farthest away class gets to collect their belongings first.

These basic rules have been programmed into your brain since kindergarten. Just because you have grown inches taller than the rest of your class, you are a social butterfly who has to talk to your friends or you lucked out in the locker draw, does not give you a reason to lose your manners. Live by the golden rule; do to others as you’d want done to yourself. You would not enjoy being shoved into a wall, a book being dropped on your head or a backpack hitting your gut, so avoid these hallway misdemeanors to keep traffic flowing.