Surge PROTECT That:-)

Already I have learned a lot here at NC Central. #1 lesson officially learned at NCCU is that when you get into the real world, make sure you always pay your power bill and that you always have flashlights. On the what to bring list I saw flashlight but didn’t understand the need for one…now I understand. You might ask how or why did I learn that at NC Central. The craziest thing so far this year was a blackout for over 9 hours, but the good thing at the time was no morning classes. At about 9 o’clock one night the power blinked and about 5 minutes later it blinked again but this time it went out and did not come back on until waaaaay later the next day. What was beyond me at that time of night was why we didn’t have power but my aunt, who lives down the street, did have power? Come to find out she is on another power line and a piece was missing in the power system so all buildings had to brought back up slowly. So at 9 o’clock that night the only light available to my roommate and me at the time were our computers and our only source of communication with the outside world was our cell phones, but you had to be wise because of course that is when a cell phone would decide to go dead. Ironically to connect to the internet in the residence hall rooms you have to have an Ethernet cord, but when the power went out we were still able to get on the internet sill so that was a little interesting. Turns out it was just a malfunction on campus.

I never realized how much I relied on power until I didn’t have it. When the power went out so did the air, so it soon started to get warm in the room. Luckily since the room is cinder blocks it didn’t get too too warm, but I heard other people saying their room was unbearable, so they went outside. I saw a lot of people outside but I couldn’t understand why and I also saw them walking down the hill towards the gym. I knew one building had been evacuated which I thought was strange; supposedly it was a safety hazard. I would think college students in the streets with no lights would be a bigger safety hazard…but that’s just my opinion. I refused to go outside my room was just fine for me, I kind of felt like the people in New York when they had that black out some years back. The whole thing was so surreal because when I looked out onto the rest of the campus it was pitch black nothing had light whatsoever, the lights that we were seeing were from the stairwells and the police cruisers that were riding around campus. That was definitely a night to remember. The next morning I woke up and still no power so I decided I was going to miss my first, well it had been cancelled anyways I was too overjoyed to hear that. Of course the next thing on the mind was food, since there was no power the café was obviously CLOSED, but we were told that we were getting Chick-fil-a down stairs at 12. I decided to take a quick shower to also realize with no power means, no hot water also. Guess it was pretty hot outside because the water was luke warm I wanted to be the one of the first ones but the food took forever so eventually I left and went to auntie’s house(thank goodnesss for her living around the corner). Downstairs was definitely a trip though, and I wish I would have recorded it, as it started filling up it started to get hotter but our air came from the refrigerator down stairs, and that night before people were walking down the hill to Burger King. I didn’t understand before but I was informed they were walking to Burger King to charge their phones and it came to me why people were carrying surge protectors. Think about it a surge protector has 4 to 8 or more plugs so 1 person with a surge protector could charge plenty of phones LOL! How interesting I know, the things college students will come up with. So we gon SURGE PROTECT THAT!