Today, We Are All Hokies!

Many of you might have heard of what happened yesterday on the campus of Virginia Tech. Although the events occurred and have surely affected the community of Blacksburg, Virginia, they were events that have hit the whole nation, particularly college students everywhere.

I heard about the events as I returned home from a weekend trip to Barcelona. After being disconnected from the internet for a weekend, I usually peruse the news that I may have missed. I was actually on ESPN.com when I saw a news alert. It was about 4:30 pm here in Rome, making it about 10:30 am back in the States. At that time, the severity of the event kept continuing to worsen as minutes passed. As a college student, one immediately thinks "I can't believe this is happening at a college campus", especially one like VT. My next immediate thought was about all my friends at VT. Through all my years in college I've met many students from VT at internships, conferences, you name it.

My biggest connection was through the two Materials Science & Engineering Departments at UF and VT. One of the most popular professors at UF's MSE took the department head job at VT's MSE just a few years ago. Through that connection, MSE students (including myself) from both schools had the opportunity to page at a yearly conference in Cocoa Beach which was organized by this professor. We always looked forward to hanging out with each other, and I had the opportunity to do this for 3 years, often seeing the same faces year after year. One year, we even exchanged school shirts and some days I'd proudly wear my VT shirt around UF.

It just so happened that the main building of VT's MSE is connected to the building in which many of the shootings occurred. It's one thing to know that such a horrific event happened, but it's hard to imagine it more when you know some of your friends could have been involved. Thankfully all the friends I know were OK. One friend of mine would have had class in the very building the events occurred at the same time the next day. Another friend of mine should have been in the German class where all but 4 people were shot, but happened to be skipping class that day.

Although all of my friends are OK, I know a lot of them lost close friends and knew others who were wounded. It is also hard to get over that 33 families have to deal with the loss of their loved ones. I know I join other college students around the nation and world in being behind all the VT students and community. Our prayers and thoughts are with you!