The Fire Alarm Diaries: A Love Letter to Student Housing Chaos

If you’ve ever lived in a dorm with stoves and ovens, then you’ve definitely experienced the most unpleasant sound known to mankind:

WIU. WIU. WIU.

Every. God. Damn. Day.

And I’m not talking about those calm, professional alarms where someone with a clipboard shows up and announces, “False alarm, everyone chill out.”
No, I’m talking about three massive fire trucks pulling up to the building like it’s the end of days — and the alarm keeps screaming the entire time. No mercy. No silence. Just endless noise and chaos.

At my student dorm, every fire alarm legally requires fire trucks to be called. It doesn’t matter if someone just burned a piece of toast — you will have professional firefighters on site within minutes, fully ready to storm the building.

I live in a tall building with three elevators. And when the alarm goes off — for “safety reasons” (understandable, I guess) — they lock all the elevators. So everyone has to use the stairs. And let me tell you, you’ve never known true regret until you’re sprinting down 12 flights of stairs in socks and existential dread.

To make things even better, the alarms go off at completely random times. So when you're standing outside the building in the cold, shivering with 50 other confused students, you get this unfiltered snapshot of what everyone was doing when the chaos hit. It’s honestly wild. One girl might be in a towel. Someone else is clutching their laptop like it’s a lifeline. It’s like a weird, depressing fashion show for disaster preparedness.

One time, I was peacefully sitting at the kitchen table, eating strawberries, minding my business, romanticizing my life like I was living in a quiet countryside cottage.
Then — WIU WIU WIU.
I jumped out of my seat, grabbed my coat, and booked it down the stairs. Somewhere between the seventh and fourth floors, I started questioning my life choices. Every step made the staircase feel longer. I was sweating, breathless, and honestly kind of angry at my past self for deciding to cook pasta that week. Maybe I should’ve just lived on cereal.

By the time I finally made it to the lobby, the fire trucks were already there. Three of them. Lights flashing. Firefighters casually unloading gear like they were about to fight an actual dragon.

I sat down on the cold concrete steps outside, wrapped in my fluffy coat, still wearing my long red pajamas, trying to process the last 10 minutes of my life. Just... staring.

And then, out walked two girls from the building.
With wine glasses.
Filled with white wine.
Perfect hair. Completely unbothered.

And there I was.
Sweaty. Sleep-deprived. Strawberry-less.
Sitting in my cartoon-pajama glory, rethinking everything.

Just another Tuesday night at uni.