Fresno Famous

My heart and prayers go out to the students and faculty and the families of those that were taken from life too early yesterday in Virginia. As a student myself, I find it inconceivable that I could be sitting in class one day and someone could come in and start shooting at all of us. And yet, it has happened. Imagining the helplessness that they all must have felt makes me sick to my stomach. As a future faculty member, I'm trying to imagine a different sort of helplessness, a helplessness in responsibility. There is nothing a proffessor can do in that situation just as there is nothing a student can do. Listening to an interview with one student who, with a fellow student, was able to prevent the shooter from entering his classroom, I was heartbroken and sickened once again just to think that some were able to protect themselves only because the shooter started with a different classroom. The full weight of the knowledge of this random choice was evident on the student's face as he began to breakdown and could only say that he was glad to be around to be interviewed. Lastly, I try to imagine the pain the family members must feel right now. No one expects their child, brother, or sister to go to class and not make it home because someone decided to randomly choose them and shoot them. For the rest of us, we have to try and find something positive that we can take from this incident. We can call our parents to say hello more often. Talk to our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbors. Life is precious and is short enough already. We need to take every moment and live it, share love with those around us. Moments like these remind me of the way life ought to be. But it can only be so if we make it so. It takes very little effort from us, but it can mean a great deal.