When I walked into my first period class on Thursday morning, my teacher told us that she had to have an important talk with all of us. I was confused at first and thought maybe someone had cheated on our most recent test or something. However I couldn’t be more wrong. She began to tell us about some rumors that had been floating around our school that week concerning a student possibly shooting up the school.

I was shocked. I hadn’t heard anything even close to that rumor, and neither had any of my friends that were in my first period with me. Apparently our administration had been tipped off about a student who had posted several photos of people who committed mass shootings at schools in the past, followed by a photo of said student posing with what people thought was a gun. It was later discovered that the gun pictured was a paintball gun.

While this was a false alarm, it did trigger a full investigation and understandably concerned many students and faculty members. But the thing that I found most shocking was that so few people actually had heard about this. I ended up having multiple conversations about this throughout the day, and almost every person I spoke to was on the same page as me; we didn’t have a clue about any of it.

Of course I had the immediate, “What if it had been real?” thoughts followed by the “Oh god, what would I even do in that situation?” realization. So I started to think, it very well could have been real and it could still happen any day. This tragedy is something that we as Americans have seen too often in the last decade or so. I felt so oblivious to the whole thing that had transpired in the beginning of the week. It sounds silly considering there was no real gun and only a paintball gun, but the idea of how easily something like that could have taken place at my own school made me think of the indescribable consequences for a school shooting.

Of course no one knows when something as awful as this may occur, but it really made me feel oblivious to all that was going on around me. All the “what if’s” came rushing to my brain, I hadn’t said goodbye to my dad that morning because he went to work before I even woke up, I didn’t hug my mom before I walked out the door that day, I could’ve been fighting with one of my sisters or friends. There is an endless amount of possibilities that really put my priorities in check.

While I’m so thankful to have a school that takes the safety of its students as seriously as my own does, it still rattled me and the people I spoke to about it. I am so blessed to feel safe everyday at school, and I hope that this awful nightmare of a situation never becomes a reality for anyone.

I think the main message that this story teaches is that it has become all too common to see school shootings on the news. It has become too easy for kids to gain access to guns. Those who act out these vicious crimes are often overlooked and not given the attention they need. Sometimes, like in the case of the Isla Vista shooter, these people reach out before they do anything. While not all will post videos on YouTube hinting at their potential crime there are signs that people should pick up on. I cannot stress enough how important it is to speak up if you see something of concern, you never know what you might be preventing.