A Very Testing Environment

When I’m in high school, my school undergoes a campus change due to various issues with the current campus, mainly size. The change from the fifty-year-old original campus to the brand new campus occurs partway through my sophomore year, but we are still at the old campus for the first half of my sophomore year.

I’m taking a test in World History class around November when the fire alarm blares. My class dutifully leaves their tests and we exit the building. A fair bit of us are grumbling, since it’s pretty cold and breezy out and most of us are just in jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts. After a few minutes, we get the okay from the teachers to go back inside. We return to our tests and assume that’s the end of it.

We’ve barely warmed up when the fire alarm rings again. We grumble at getting interrupted again — most of us really just want to finish the test — leave the classroom, and go sit outside again until we get the okay to go back inside.

After we get back inside, it’s not five minutes before the fire alarm rings again.

We complain and go to leave the building, but fewer than half of us are out the classroom door before one of the other teachers calls out, “For goodness’ sake, go back to class!”

Everyone finishes the test on time and we get the fire alarm fixed so we won’t have drills every five minutes.