are going to be the death of me. Having worked in Residence Life for the past 13 years, I have dealt with my fair share of fire alarms. The main problem has always been that, in my first building (I have now worked in two), the smoke detectors were extra sensitive. There was an alarm that went off every day for at least the first two months until everyone realized how sensitive they were. And then it still went off at least once a week. for the rest of the year.
Over time it becomes like anything extreme but present in large amounts; i.e. sex, violence, gangster rap. You naturally become desensitized to it. As a resident, it's very easy to do. As someone who works there...I always had to fight the feeling. Because eeeeevery so often, it would be the real deal. There would be an actual emergency and I couldn't stay in bed. Over the past 13 years I keep having to remind myself that I am responsible for the lives of these residents. As a Resident Assistant, a Graduate Assistant and now a Community Director, they kind of rely on me. Luckily for me, I had a great mentor in the Community Director I used to work for, who would always get up. Two, three, four in morning, when it would be all to easy to roll over and trust that someone else on the staff would respond to the alarm. So now I can say....I get it from my boss.
Last week a resident set something on fire and threw it down the trash chute. Middle of the day. When the alarm system told me "Basement," it would have been easy to dismiss it and cut the alarm off. But then we would have had a problem. Because there was a real fire. Today however...just a contractor doing work a little too close to the smoke detector. And now I can't go back to sleep.
Legal Note: Opinions in this post are my own and not representative of the university I work for or the people I work under. All suppositions, presumptions, theories, hypotheses, etc. are my own. This blog is for entertainment purposes only, blah blah blah. There are purposely no names included in this post, and I have revealed nothing that violates either general expectations of privacy or the University confidentiality agreement, which, actually... I never signed anyway. All of that is to say...don't be trying to sue me.
