<p>Gustav is headed for NOLA and we'll never forget Katrina and its effect on schools in that region. Have any of you been directly affected by some kind of disaster that has disrupted your education, either at college or in high school? Did you learn from it? If so, how? (Don't worry; this is NOT an essay question.)</p>
<p>I heard some people at Pepperdine got affected by the fires.</p>
<p>I woke up for my first morning of first semester finals to find that <em>everything</em> on campus, and in the entire state of Connecticut was shut down by an ice storm. Many finals (but not all!!) postponed, cold food only in dining halls, no lights for studying etc. Power was restored to campus very quickly -- and then the issue became was there power at <em>home</em>. Lots of us stayed longer at school than expected because our homes were still out of power several days after the storm. (This was December 1973!)</p>
<p>Lesson? Have a battery backup for your alarm clock. Set two alarms for 8 am finals. Always have extra batteries for the calculator. Don't count on being able to plug it in. Lesson is now extraneous due to solar powered calculators!</p>
<p>Yes..... spent a week in NYC and on travel to school 9-11 happened. Big disruption. Lesson would be that life is uncertain and evil is real.</p>
<p>I was in high school in downtown NYC during 9/11. Our school was evacuated and classes were canceled for a week or two. Classes resumed at a different school where we shared the building with other students. We had our classes during the afternoon and early evening while the students that were already there had classes in the early morning. We returned to our building about a month later, but nothing was ever the same. </p>
<p>Lesson... anything can happen.</p>
<p>Medical issues. Lost 18 months of schooling. The best laid plans.....</p>
<p>I was either a sophomore or junior (I believe I was a junior, but I don't remember for sure) when all the Cinco de Mayo riots happened...we actually had a lockdown and kids actually walked out of our school. We were locked down for about 3 hours all told. We could hear the police sirens and the screaming outside of our classroom (the classroom I was in faced the street), but we couldn't actually see what was going on because lockdown required that we closed all the windows & blinds. Scary times.</p>
<p>My university (UC San Diego) canceled a whole week of school due to the So. Cal. fires last year, and for good reason. The air quality was horrific to the point where you could not stay outdoors for any reasonable amount of time. At the same time, secluding yourself within a dorm/apartment for the amount of time that the fires raged would still be unhealthful (air quality, sedentariness = bad, etc.). </p>
<p>Everyone went home. However, some professors still made their students responsible for any material missed due to the shortened school period.</p>
<p>I was a freshman in high school in Florida during the crazy '04 hurricane season. Our town took a direct hit from a Cat. 4 storm (we'd had 4 days of school) and the result was pretty devastating. School was cancelled for two weeks, as about half of the schools in the county were either destroyed or had significant damage. Our rival high school got destroyed and so we were on a similar schedule to ken285 (except my school went in the morning and the rivals went during the afternoon/evening), which lasted about 8-9 months. It was rough, but we (those of us who still had homes) learned to appreciate our houses and our only slightly damaged school (and early morning coffee).</p>
<p>I'm a freshman at Tulane right now... so yeah I am being affected by Gustav right now. I had to evacuate after 2 days of class and should be coming back sometime next week. Guess I'm on hurrication right now</p>
<p>Many parents my age will probably remember how many colleges closed in the springs of 1970 and 1972 due to Vietnam-era students protesting a different sort of "disaster."</p>
<p>What I learned from it is that collective action can have an impact.</p>
<p>true story but my friend was at virginia tech at the time the shooter walked into the building</p>
<p>SARS in Singapore -- during sec 1. Swallowed mercury because of a broken thermometer after playing with it too much (mandatory temperature test-taking twice a day).</p>
<p>The disruption came when we had to make up for a 2-week quarantine with e-homework posted from the school, and I didn't manage that very well.</p>
<p>idk if this is considered cataclysmic but during the whole immigration rally thing in Southern California, a couple of my friends were involved in that whole disruption at UCLA</p>
<p>
[quote]
evil is real.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>uh....no .</p>
<p>Screw you moral relativists. Immanuel Kant all the way.</p>
<p>When our Student Body President was randomly robbed and murdered last year, the entire campus was paralyzed and devastated. It was a terrible experience that really put things into perspective..</p>
<p>i'm a student in LA and have gotten all week off thanks to gustav... ugh.</p>
<p>it's very disrupting, and now we've got an extra two days of school in may.</p>
<p>Katrina interrupted my schooling back in 2005. My family had to evacuate to Alexandria, and went to a school there for about two weeks before we returned home a month after we left. For the first semester of the year, I had to go to a rival high school because my school flooded and had to be gutted. The school had shifts because thousands of kids that didn't have a place to go were going there, and I was in the 6 to 12 shift. Gustav caused me to get off of school the rest of this week, and we might not be able to return after that because so much of the city doesn't have power. (about 1.2 million people including me) Current estimates project that half of the city will have power in a week, and my school might not get power in time. This shouldn't be as bad as Katrina because my school didn't recieve close to as much damage as it did in 2005.</p>
<p>The question continues: Is this repeated rebuilding worth it?</p>