A Reluctant Student Body

It was an incredibly cold morning. The power went off at around 4 this morning to some great fanfare, as I had gone to bed without turning off my computer speakers and they were sizzling and crackling with the sounds of power cutting in and out until they finally went dead along with everything else connected by electricity in this town. Worse than being awakened by the strange otherworldly sounds being emitted from beneath my desk was to hear the sound of the furnace turning off, and knowing it would not be coming back on until someone, somewhere, somehow fixed the town's power crisis this frosty morning. Having been bedridden all of yesterday, I was reluctant to even try and attend 8 A.M. class this morning. That reluctance began long before the power outage and the following crusade of cold air that marked the morning's events. Fortunately for all involved, I was soon flooded with a flurry of irritating text messages, alerts, and phone calls all spawned from the same twisted source, the school. Now for the sake of journalistic integrity, I will just go ahead and admit that I for one have always been of the firm belief that whenever your school is trying to get a hold of you it is bad news, and you should avoid this at all costs. Perhaps this is the paradigm the school was working with when they decided a single text message was unlikely to reach students so they would instead send a flurry of messages, emails, calls, voicemails, and since I haven't checked today perhaps even postcards and letters all in the hopes of reaching a reluctant student body. The irritation I would normally have felt at someone "blowing up" my phone so early after a miserable night's sleep was greatly lessened with each new message. The first was an alert that not only was I without power, but the same fate befell the town and yes, even the school. The next message was an improvement, it went on to say that classes would be postponed until 10:15 as a result of the power outage. This was great news for me with an 8:00 class. I tossed the blanket over my head in an attempt to expel the colder air gathering around me and perhaps magically drift into a peaceful slumber. It was not to be, no sooner had I done so when another flurry of messages arrived. "Alert, students! If you are cold in your apartments come to campus  for shelter." Several robotic voiced voicemails later saying the same thing I became aware I could retreat to campus if I got too cold in my apartment. How walking out into the sub-zero temperatures and snow to find my way to a spacious building with no power or heating to stay warm would help me I was unable to understand. In the end the power returned before severe rioting broke out or any survivor colonies could firmly take root in any of the larger buildings on campus. It was a miracle of modern ingenuity and technology that anyone could appreciate, except perhaps for my 8:00 A.M. sculpture class instructor.