Virginia Tech

I feel that I have to be serious in light this week's shootings at Virginia Tech. This event hits close to home for us all as instructors in English departments and graduate students who spend every day on campus.

The morning of the shootings one of my classmates got a call from her sister who is a Virginia Tech student, telling her that two people had been killed. I don't know if it was exceptionally callous of me, but I didn't think too much of it. That day I taught my classes, went to the library and it wasn't untill later that night that the enormity of the shootings finally struck me. The next day on campus was surreal. I found myself looking, and I mean really looking, into the faces of everyone I passed in the hall. I attend a university that was the site of another mass shooting and the reminders of the killings are never far away. I felt haunted by the presence of this past and the new wave of deaths on another campus.

Today, during my office hours, a student who was absent Monday came into my office. He seemed really run down, exhausted and upset. He started by apologizing for his absence and then told me that his best friend was in the dorm where the shootings began. Her mother had called him because she couldn't get ahold of her daughter. Finally, at the end of the day, they were able to reach the girl and she was alive but traumatized by the events.

Before the shootings, I was planning to post about the ridiculous papers I spent the last week grading and venting my frustration. Yet it seems that these events put our position in another light. I'm probably the only teacher that my student was able to sit down and talk to. I know it's not officially our job, but sometimes being a counselor or a sounding board is much more rewarding then handing out grades and criticizing essays. I left our meeting feeling really helpful for once: that in simply sitting there and listening I was helping him articulate something that he was struggling through.

I am chilled and horrified by the campus shootings. I also feel that there is no where else I'd rather be at this moment than on a college campus.