The Wake-Up Call

My day started out at 1:30 this morning to the sound of an extremely loud buzzer.  Thinking it to be my alarm clock gone haywire, I quickly leapt from my bed to eliminate the noise and sincerely apologize to my room mates who undoubtedly were awaken by it.  I pressed snooze, turned my alarm off, and to my dismay still heard the horrible dissonance.  With reluctance, I unplugged the whole thing and decided that resetting my clock would be far better than dealing with exhausted, angry room mates.  As I pulled the plug my ears were ringing with pain and it suddenly clicked that the buzzing was much too loud to be claimed by my clock... It was the fire alarm!
At that point my room mates, irritated and drowsily, emerged from their rooms, and we all went to the hallway to see what we were supposed to do.  But the hallway held no answers or explanations, only other confused tenants attempting to shield their ears from the shrieks of the fire alarm.  In hind sight, we probably should have found the closest exit and left the building, but at 2 am who can really think clearly?  So we stayed in the hallway, asking questions that no one knew the answer to, and commiserating over our loss of sleep.
After my ear drums had almost burst, the shrieks finally quit, and what a glorious lack of sound that was!  Although, the quiet did not remain for long.  Soon conspiracies were spread revolving around someone falsely pulling the fire alarm and bugs in the alarm system.  People even went as far as to say that the police were on their way and were corralled towards the lobby, but halfway down were told to return to our rooms.  So much for me trying to get a good night's rest for the first day of school :)