thoughtcrumbs

If there's a fire, it's the grad students that will die

Every day I enter Newell-Simon Hall at the ground-level floor. There are at least three floors below, and the stairs are gated counterintuitively to prevent panicked people from rushing underground in an emergency. So every day I approach this gate, think, and pull it open. (Crowds tend to push, not pull, which is why emergency exits always open outward.) However, I've become so inured to the inconsistency that I naturally pull the gate without a second thought now. Hopefully I'll forget all this priming in a fire.