User blog comment:Catfishperson/The Ending of the Old Age. The Beginning of a New/@comment-26322120-20160611041934

Gather round 8th Graders, Catfishperson has a 1st day of high-school story to tell!

First thing you need to know is that Berkely High is massive, literally three-thousand something kids go there (thats more then the population of some cities), and so the campus is a sprawling mass of 10 or so multi story buildings. Heres a map:

Anyway on the first day, like every other 9th grader I showed up 20 minuets early to try to locate as many of my classes as possible, (Given nothing but a piece of paper.) The hallways were a madhouse of Freshmen scuttling around, and the noise was tremendous. It was pretty overwhelming, coming from a rather calm Middle School of about 400 students. The sense of panic in the air was already tangible, so when I opened a door that said something about fire evacuation routes, and the first bell rang... (The bell at Bhs is an electronic beeping, rather then the classic ringing-bell sound that I was used to from my Middle School,) my immediate thought was that the door was one of those that set of the Fire Alarm when opened.

I was terrified, and it took me at least 30 seconds of sheer terror and panic to realize that I had not in fact set off the fire alarm.