Despite graduating at the top of her class from an elite preparatory high school, answering every question correctly on the SAT, and breaking the Minnesota high school record for the 100-meter backstroke, freshman Katie Guerrero still experiences a tremendous amount of difficulty in mounting her Stanford dorm room bed every night.
“I had a lot of trouble during NSO, but I thought there was just a learning curve to it,” Guerrero said in reference to Stanford’s standard 36-inch tall bed frame.
“But to this day, I still have to take a running start. Even then, I sometimes fall backwards and pull the comforter down with me.”
Guerrero currently plays two Division I NCAA sports, works in a research lab studying ultrafast photoemission of the topological insulator bismuth selenide, and relies on a desk chair as part of the process of getting into bed each night.
“I had a lot of fears about coming to Stanford, but I didn’t realize that slightly-above-average height beds would be such a problem.
It is my greatest challenge so far,” Guerrero commented as she collected her breath having just summited her inconveniently-high sleeping surface.
At this point, Guerrero has completely ruled out trying to mount beds with dormmates already sitting on them, as her complex midair pirouettes either end with her face-down in someone’s crotch or bloodied on the floor.
