(I originally wrote this as a comment in response to a few other’s posts about this discussion, but I could not post it.)

The conversation from our history class about the Paris attacks also shook me. But in a different way. I’ve always been a little scared that something was going to happen again, but I always hoped it wouldn’t happen to me. The other night I was in a movie theater seeing the new Hunger Games movie, and I got scared whenever I saw movement around me. Ever since the movie theater shootings in the past few years I’ve been a little afraid of a shooter, and ever since I can remember I’ve been afraid of violence due to the 9/11 attacks and the many mass killings in America. I thought that this conversation was kind of enlightening because we pointed out to Dr. Smith that we’re almost a little conditioned to this violence. She had no idea, and was a little horrified to find out, that we grew up having “intruder drills.” Some kids said they started them in middle school, but I remember them as far back as kindergarten. We would lock the door, turn off the lights, pull down the shades, and huddle in the corner away from the door and windows, or at least that’s how my school district did this. My school had a lot of exchange students go through, my family housed three from Germany, and I know for a fact none of them have experienced this. Other countries don’t do this. And our generation thinks it’s normal.