Ever had one of those days where you feel like you never should have gotten out of bed? A few days ago, I was having one. I had a paper due that I couldn’t quite come up with the words for, I was trying to finish an application that seemed totally overwhelming and I had an exam coming up that I needed to start studying for. Let me preface the rest of this by saying, I’m the kind of person who dresses like a complete bum when I have a lot of homework. I stop wearing makeup, my hair goes in a bun and, chances are, I wear the same sweatpants I fell asleep wearing the night before. It’s weird, I know, but it’s just how I work best. However, on that particular morning, I decided to switch it up. I woke up and felt like the only way I was going to be productive was if I wore “real clothes” and made myself look socially presentable.
So, I put on a dress, did my hair and makeup, and went off to class. When I returned from class, I was completely exhausted, but, after a long internal battle, I decided not to take a nap. I grabbed a glass of water and a snack, sat down at my desk and opened up my laptop. I proceeded to stare at a blank screen for 20 minutes. The words were just not coming. Finally, an idea came to me, and I started typing. I had written about a paragraph when, suddenly, my glass of water leapt off my desk and into my lap. This is where my day got really interesting.
I looked down at my soaked dress, and decided that it was totally not worth it to pay for a dryer just to dry one article of clothing. So, I changed into some pajama pants and a flannel, and did the first thing I could think of: grabbed my blow-dryer and started trying to blow-dry the water out of my dress. I thought this was a somewhat brilliant idea. WRONG. My dress was almost dry when an ear-splitting noise erupted in my room. Yes, you guessed it: I set off the smoke alarm with a blow-drier. I am “that girl.”
As my roommate and I plugged our ears and ran out of the room, my RA met us in the hallway and gave us a confused look. I sheepishly explained to her that I’m pretty sure my blow-dryer was the culprit, and she, following procedure, called the police. The three of us sat in the hallway, listening to the horrendous noise and waiting for someone to turn off the alarm. Finally, it stopped. A few minutes later, a maintenance man came up and knocked on my door. As soon as I opened it, he started laughing and said, “You and your evil blow-dryer… what WERE you doing?!” I stared at him for a second, and then I started laughing too. It was just that ridiculous. There was nothing I could do but laugh at myself and my bad luck.
There are two morals that I took away from this event. First, I should never dress up to do homework. Clearly, I am just meant to wear sweatpants and T-shirts if I’m going to work. Dressing up can only end in disaster. Second, never, under any circumstances, should you ever try to blow-dry your clothes in a dorm room. Take it from me … the $1.50 it takes to use the dryer in the laundry room is TOTALLY worth it.
