Is Reading Week All That Stressful? Sam live-blogs.

Well, if you're the person down the hall from me then the answer is "Yes. Oh G-d Yes."

I came back to my dorm a few minutes ago and I heard what I thought was a saxophone squeaking. "Dang, this is annoying," I thought to myself, but wasn't concerned. But after the continuous saxophone shrieking continued for a full 5 minutes, I began to get concerned.

I went out into the hall and saw that a small crowd had gathered. By now the sax squeak has turned into full-blown yells of bloody murder, which my neighbor was able to sustain for minutes at a time. Eventually the screaming grew weaker and turned into a sort of sad and angry moan, with occasional bursts of all-out shrieking.

Finally we decided to knock on the door and ask if there was something any of could do to help....and the screaming/moaning stopped instantly. You could tell she was just sitting in silence waiting for us to go away. We waited a few minutes in the silence, then knocked again. And still no response. So we had no choice but to walk away.

.....

She's stopped screaming now, instead relying upon brief intermittent shrieks to let out her frustration. Occasionally I'm hearing squeaks that sound like some kind of Peruvian jungle monkey, if such a creature exists. And sometimes she sounds like crow, you know, going "CAW! CAW!" or whatever.

Ah, wait, no, the screaming is continuing. And now it sounds like she's throwing heavy objects at the walls. A couple of us out in the halls wonder if she's just having particularly loud sex. We can hear her typing though, so we know it's probably schoolwork related.

....

Finally we've tracked down a CA who knocks on her door, but again the screamer falls silent. He waits outside the door, saying weakly, "You know, I'm a CA so you should open the door.....yeah....." but the girl just waits in silence for the CA to go away. Which he eventually does.

And then the silence is broken yet again, this time by short bursts of profanity. "FUUUUUUCK!" she yells at the top of her lungs, so loudly that I bet people in Tokyo are wondering what the hell is going on. Then there's utter silence or a couple minutes. Then suddenly I hear a large object being thrown against the wall, and then, "SHIIIIIIIIT! DAMN IT!" And then the room falls silent again, except for the sound of a paper being typed.

Holy fuck, the cops are now in the hallway. There are POLICE OFFICERS IN MY HALLWAY!


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So I heard the cops talking to the girl, who was sobbing, and apparently this is indeed a case of stress.

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Okay, just got back upstairs from dinner, and on the way up the stairs I saw they had a friggin STRETCHER in the lobby, and that basically half of the town's fire department and paramedics are outside. I think they're taking the girl to the hospital.

All this cos of finals...

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She's now arguing with the cops, she refuses to go to the hospital, they're calling for back-up....... you can HEAR the crazy in her voice. She's calling wildly for the police to sign a form that she wrote up, which they refuse. Finally they said, "What day of the week is it?" And she thought for a moment and said, "Wednesday."

It's Thursday.

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Holy fuck, 5 paramedics just came running down our hall, and now they're dragging her out of her room by her arms.

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