Today has been a bit more somber for me than most, as it’s the eighth anniversary of a very tragic event that happened at my university, Virginia Tech, in the normally sleepy little town (except on game days) of Blacksburg, Virginia. It was a senseless act of violence, and truly something I will never understand. What I do know is I grew up a lot faster than I expected my sophomore year, and took what I felt was my first true stance on a controversial issue: gun control. There must be more of it. What we have now in the States is not enough. The continued violence in educational institutions, and in general, has made that evident.

It’s a little difficult being across the pond today, when usually I’d be getting together with some of my college New Yorker friends to just be. Still, I know we’re all thinking the same thing. One of my very favorite poets and professors at VT, Nikki Giovanni, wrote this beautiful piece for our student body at the convocation we attended the day after. I reference it often when I’m going through hard times as it has such heart to it, or just find myself thinking back to this time. It captures the Virginia Tech spirit in the most beautiful way, and was a true source of inspiration for us all.

“We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.”

Ps. The picture above is from the balloon release in honor of the 32 victims in heaven that happens each year in front of Burruss Hall.