When all the rooms in our dormitory building were silent, the sudden “BEEEE--BEEEE-BEEEE” of the fire alarm woke everybody up with a start! I got out of bed, grasped a blanket and ran out of the room before opening my eyes.

    I was one of the earliest girls to reach the dorm front door. The rain was pouring outside; a storm was expected that morning. I checked my watch. It was only 3 a.m.! I wondered what was happening as more girls gathered by the door.

    “We need to leave the building, girls. We will go to the student center.” The dormitory faculty told us to go to a building on the center campus. But we were wearing pajamas, some of us were even barefooted and none of us had an umbrella.

    “We must leave. This is the rule.” The teacher insisted. Subsequently, us girls sprinted to the student center in the rain at 3 o’clock in the morning.

    This was not a drill. Nobody would expect a drill at this time in the morning.

    A fire drill means that whenever the alarm rings, you need to stop what you’re doing, run out of the building, and wait for 30 minutes before the firemen check the building and come back in.

    But if it’s not a drill, you never know how long it may take. We were mostly all soaked when we got to the center. There was no electricity and therefore no heater. The teacher told us one of the freshmen put an air freshener in the room and the detector confused it with smoke. It caused the alarm to go off. And now we should wait for the fire department to allow us to return.

    An hour passed and we grew bored and sleepy, until one of the faculty said: “If you want to return to your room, you may go now.”

    We sprinted back through the rain, swearing as we went. When I finally touched my cozy bed again, it was already 4.30 a.m. I groaned. I had to get up at 6 to do fitness exercises in the gym. I only had an hour and half of sleep left!