Back in 2021, my grade school conducted an intruder drill at my school, J.L. Buford Intermediate. I was a fifth grader at the time, and we were not told by the principal that it was a drill.

The memories I have from that day are very brief, however, the memories that I do have, I will never forget.

The day looked something like this:

It was just a normal day at school, the month was April, so it was pretty nice outside. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and honestly, not much had happened. Our teacher was talking and we were completing our work.

Out of nowhere, the intercom came on, with a lady saying, “There is an intruder in the building.”

We all jumped out of our seats and headed to the closet where we were supposed to go when there was an intruder. We huddled in the corner of the closet, trying our best to hide. Most of the students were crying.

All of us were scared and confused since most of us didn’t know what was happening.

A few minutes passed and then the teacher said that he received a text message that said, “The intruder is on the other side of the school, you can now evacuate.”

We run out of the closet and begin making our way out of the school. When we were leaving though, a boy accidentally tripped and began rolling down the hill.

After we got outside and were about to leave, the teacher said that everything was just a drill. They had arranged this so that they would know how we would react if there ever was a real intruder in the school.

All of the students were upset and sad since they thought that it was a real intruder. All of the teachers were scared and confused, but they attempted to keep their emotions under control so that we weren’t as scared.

The entire drill ended up being around 25 minutes long. A lot of the students were still crying, even though we were informed that it was just a drill. While the drill was traumatizing, it was also beneficial to know what it would be like if there ever was a real intruder.

However, one thing that I learned from this drill the most, is that you should always be grateful for being alive since you never know when that could be taken away from you.