On Tuesday, Aug. 20, at around 1:50 p.m., I was sitting peacefully in my room in Cary, N.C., talking to friends online and making excited preparations to move back to Duke.
Suddenly, the room started to shake. Not dangerously, mind you—but strong enough to alert me that something extremely strange was going on. The windows were rattling; my glass of apple juice appeared to be in danger of toppling over (apparently, I should’ve drank from a juice box instead).
What was happening? Unsure, I looked around the room and realized that the fan was on the highest possible setting. It had gotten too aggressive, I reasoned—logical explanation! So I switched it off.
Still, the room shook, as fervently as ever.
Was this the end? The first sign of the 2012 apocalypse? Had the rumor that Will and Jada were breaking up caused Willow Smith to whip her hair in seismic-scale anger? Had Kim Kardashian’s weekend wedding frenzied the geological-weather gods into a belated flurry of excitement? It couldn’t have been simple plate tectonic movement. That just doesn’t happen in North Carolina.
Yet, seemingly as soon as it started, the shaking stopped. The windows rested innocently inside their frames. My apple juice chilled peacefully on my tabletop. Birds chirped blissfully. Leaves rustled harmlessly to the tune of the summer sun. It was as if nothing had happened, nothing at all.
Had I imagined the entire ordeal? Was I going insane? Had I finally, fraught with two years of deep academic and social stress, cracked under the pressures of Duke. … Enough to imagine the world quake, jiggling apocalyptically around me?
Casually, nonchalantly, I mentioned to the friend I was chatting with. “Is it just me, or did the ground just shake?” I exhaustively checked Facebook and Twitter to see if anyone had, in fact, felt the same apocalyptic tremor.
Well, my sanity was confirmed. My friend verified that he had also felt the world bounce for a second around him. Twitter and Facebook had veritably exploded with news that people had felt the ground shaking and doubted their sanity as well, only to be validated by other users doing the same exact thing. “Wait, there was an earthquake? WTF?” and “OMG guys this is my first earthquake!” were the reigning Facebook statuses of the moment.
An earthquake had indeed just occurred—of magnitude 5.8, with an epicenter in Mineral, Va., about 31 miles east of Charlottesville. It’s no California—but apparently, there is actually a fault zone there. Accordingly, people had felt the quake along the entire east coast, as far down as Georgia and as far up as Canada—and yes, even at Duke.
Fatalities numbered at, well, zero; injuries were only minor. For the most part, people reacted to the earthquake as any seasoned Californian would—noted it and went back to life as normal. Us East Coasters simply desired to chronicle the event for future generations before we resumed our daily grind. And, indeed, the largest impact of the entire ordeal was the flurry of Internet activity that occurred during the event. For instance, people who checked Twitter when the quake struck Virginia could probably have realized, from the tweets of their D.C. area followers, that, soon enough the seismic waves could reach them. Apparently, information waves actually travel faster than those of the seismic variety. The Internet wins again!
At Duke, at least, people went about their lives as usual. New freshman, numbering in the 1700s, moved to Duke for the beginning of the best four years of their life. FACs moved those 1700-plus freshmen into their dorms, most not even realizing that an earthquake had occurred. Orientation week activities proceeded; Shooters II had its opening night party, advertised on Twitter with the spectacular hashtag #SHOOTERSWILLQUAKETONITE.
Us Duke students, it seems, are in an age of resiliency. We’ve endured snowstorms; the Duke busses ran perfectly on schedule just a day after, and we simply romped joyfully and made snowmen before going to class. We’ve endured forest fires, over the summer; we simply commented on the oddly smoky sky, and then went back to our daily routine. We’ve now endured an earthquake—and, clearly, life hasn’t changed one bit. Now, with Hurricane Irene looming in this weekend, we’re not too worried. Whatever nature throws at us, our daily Duke routine stands strong.
And yet we still want to let people know that we have successfully survived these things. Looking at the flurry of “OMG earthquake!” statuses pouring into my Facebook news feed, I realized that those with the most likes, comments, and discussion, were those of Duke students. And, though that earthquake felt a little like being in the laundry room when the dryer was on, us Duke students wanted to let the world know that we conquered and even enjoyed it. And it’s nice to know that our desire to connect and engage with the events that unfold around us is indeed more, well, earth-shattering, than any earthquake.
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