Consider yourself lucky. I just pulled down a light fixture in one of my bedrooms and found out that there is no ceiling box, AT ALL. They used 1 1/4" drywall screws and screwed it directly to the sheetrock. I have EMT running from the switch box to the attic space, then for some reason, they didn't terminate at the celing box. Instead, the end of the run for the EMT is right in the attic, individual wires come out of the EMT, spliced with Romex WITHOUT a junction box. The splice was done in the mid-air, no junction box, 1" out of the EMT. Then, they used the white as the hot and the black as the neutral on the Romex. Drilled a 1/4" hole in the sheetrock and slipped it through. Oh yes, very hackish.
