Grad school recruitment can be alarming

Last night, we held our now annual Graduate School Fair. The idea is to have a showcase for all the university’s programs, and by doing it all at once, we can generate a bit more publicity on campus and in the general community.

I was scheduled to give one of the presentations. One of the grad school staff has just asked me if I wanted to set up my presentation, and I’d said, “I am the presentation!”

When the fire alarm started ringing. And it kept going. And we all left the building. You know, normal stuff when a fire alarm goes off.

But I wasn’t expecting a fire truck to show up.

I never did quite figure out what the problem was, but it wasn’t just a false alarm - there was apparently some smoke from somewhere.

They let everyone back in the building after half a hour - which was, coincidentally enough, exactly the allocated time for my talk.

That's right, my talk would've been so hot it set off the fire alarm.

Oh, by the way, the picture within the picture above:

“This isn't for anyone who doesn’t have tiger blood,” strikes me as a fair assessment of grad school. It was originally from the Pittsburgh Zoo blog, which since has taken it down.

Additional: Heh. The university’s coverage of the event neglects to mention the excitement of the fire truck coming to visit.