good news for people who love bad news

~Modest Mouse

Allow me to set the scene for you:

An entire weekend of slaving at the new Vaio (which I have named "Wolfram," the element Tungsten's original name...but that's for another time) and producing what I thought was a challenging and long, but reasonable exam for my Gen Chem students ended with me giving a study session on Sunday night, followed by several hours of tweaking, writing final questions and making the test slightly easier. Bed at 2am.

I awoke with a start early Monday morning, realizing I had neglected to attach a periodic table to each exam. Other than that, things were going to be great: I had every confidence in my students' abilities and knew they were going to demonstrate their learning awesomely for me. I arrived on campus at 10:40am, with just enough time to copy the periodic tables and grab the test, and then a series of bizarre events began to unfold.

The roller-door to the science office crashed down without explanation, yet I felt no trepidation because the admin told me that an alarm must have just been triggered in the building. "Oh well," I thought, "when I'm done copying, I have to head out to my classroom anyhow." Exams in hand, I made my way across campus around 10:50am, noticing that other doors were closed in "alarm-mode" and several security guards. "Must be a fire alarm or something," I thought, as I made my way past three Seattle Police cars positioned around the campus US Bank. Seeing a friend of mine from my younger years, we chatted while I held the bookstore door open. I made my way across campus and into the other science building, and just as I set my pile of exams down on the desk, the admin came in: "We're in lockdown. Lock your door and shut it. No one can leave."

"Wha, what?" I mumbled. Are you kidding?! Lockdown? As if giving my first exam as a college professor wasn't stressful enough on its own, THIS had to happen too? Astonished, while simultaneously smiling at life's random curve-balls, I tried to quiet my students down and press onward with the exam, not really knowing how I was going to deal with 1/3 of my students being trapped elsewhere (some, I later found, were just outside but couldn't enter).

11:20am: lockdown called off. "That was peculiarly short," I thought to myself, "how in god's name could they have searched the entire campus in 20 minutes?" The MIA students slowly started trickling in, but I could tell focus would not be their ally that day.

Two days later, nothing more has been said, essentially, about the bank robbery (at 10:40am) and the school's terribly slow and inept response. Apparently there were two "unrelated" bank robberies elsewhere in Seattle that day....hmmmmm. The robber never produced a gun, yet one of my students asked to be excused from the exam because she had "seen" him waving a gun around.

Still, I had to have a little self-examination and realize, as all of my friends and family know already, that I'm terribly cavalier with my own safety (my brother looked me in the eye very seriously before I left for Panama and said: "please be safe - don't do anything stupid"). I don't know when it started, but I rarely feel afraid or threatened, for better or for worse. Now that I'm a teacher, I need to realize that I'm responsible for a bunch of other peoples' safety as well, and this was a good eye-opener in that area.

But, WHY did it have to be on exam day? Come ON! We'll talk about the results of the test another time...