How do you make 500 already overwrought law students simultaneously jump right out of their skins? Why, you set off the fire alarm in the library, of course! I'm not kidding. One second it was peace and memo and Beethoven on the headphones, and the next second there's a fire alarm piercing our eardums with its terrible shrieks, complete with flashing strobe lights. Everyone jittered and jumped, looked up, looked around, and at the obvious lack of smoke or heat toyed with staying put. Those of us in the "not-completely-silent" part of the library looked at each other questioningly. Hilary shrugged, I shrugged and said, "This place is going to have to be burning down around me before I leave here without my memo being done." We nodded at each other in agreement, turned up our headphones, and went back to work.
The alarm went off for more than a few minutes; eventually the classes downstairs began filing out and then we in the library decided maybe there really was a danger, and began to unlock, unplug and disconnect our computers -- there's no way I'd leave my computer behind; it has all my notes for the whole semester, not to mention the last three hours' of work I've put in on the memo -- when the alarm turned off.
"False alarm," explained the librarians. Fucking thing; it totally threw off my memo-writing groove.
Well, back to it, then, seeing as how I'm not about to become Fire-Roasted 1L.
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