I'm from Wisconsin...

Well I'm from the upper-Midwest and have never come even close to being in a hurricane. I've gotten tornadoes kind of near me but never anything serious. That having been said, I was moving into college at Fordham University in New York City when Hurricane Irene struck.

Now I should amend this post by saying Hurricane Irene wasn't nearly as big a deal as the news made it out to be. The fact that a hurricane (or tropical storm, according to many) even hit New York/New Jersey made it the biggest news story for like a week and it got really annoying. I didn't know what to expect when it was coming, and here are my experiences.

My parents and I were in a hotel in Nanuet, NY when the hurricane struck either late at night or early in the morning. I can't honestly say when because I was asleep and apparently slept through the majority of it. That right off the bat goes to show that it wasn't that big of a deal. I mean the amount of rainfall that accumulated was quite incredible and all, but the hurricane itself wasn't a big deal at all. My particular hotel ended up being without power for about 14 hours so that was very annoying. I texted a few of my friends just for the sake of talking, and I sent pictures to a few. By the way, these people were scattered throughout Wisconsin and Minnesota, so it was somewhat mind-blowing to them, I'm sure.

My favorite part of the whole hurricane thing had to be the lobby of the hotel, with the group of hurricane survivors around and interacting. I couldn't help but imagine myself in a kind of post-apocalyptic zombie setting with all these people locking themselves into a hotel to survive. What? I never claimed to be normal.

But people are weird, and I definitely noticed that during the midst of Irene. I mean really, do we really need to perform yoga in the pitch-black hotel lobby in front of everybody else? I mean, come on! People doing yoga in public is just weird; it just shouldn't happen. It's just very unnatural and if you do it in the middle of Central Park, anyone who doesn't stare at you is pretty damn weird IMO.

I took a pretty laid back approach to the whole hurricane thing and tried to enjoy it. I mean, sure, there were moments in which I was kind of panicking, but more just because everyone around me was panicking. I felt strange that I was so calm for the most part. There were literally people flipping out because they couldn't get the morning edition of the Times.

So I moved into college the next day without incident. But I am pleased to say that I survived a hurricane, something that I may never have to go through again. And now I'm a member of Fordham University 2015 - Class of Irene.