Virginia Tech, colleges, and living in fear again

I rode on the Metro this morning with a mother and daughter clearly doing the college tour, noting each of the different Metro stops and their attached schools. When I was in high school, we toured colleges in batches. We did the New England tour for Boston University and Northeastern. I was not MIT or Harvard material. (My locker partner wound up at Yale, Harvard Law School and eventually teaching at Stanford. Talk about getting an inferiority complex...) While I loved Boston, I don't think I was cut out for New England weather. We did the Southern tour of my mother's alma mater Columbia College and my eventual choice University of Alabama. We did the Virginia school tour, but I was unenthusiastic about all of them, especially UVA. It felt more like a museum than a school. They didn't have a journalism program anyway. Much as I adored Williamsburg, I didn't think I was a good enough student for William & Mary. Virginia Tech was more my style with its big quad and grey stone buildings. Tech wound up being the only Virginia school I applied to. In the end, I chose Bama, wanting to get out of my comfort zone. I'd lived in Virginia all my life. I wasn't sure I could manage on my own at that point. Whether I can is still up for debate, mind you.

So colleges were very much on my mind today, when I heard the news about the shootings at Virginia Tech. I heard about it when it first started, but I came back from lunch even the security guards at the front door were talking about it. The number of victims had climbed sharply.

I found myself rereading my LJ entries from October 2002 about the DC sniper attacks. While there are obvious differences, my feelings were very similar. Is there any safe place anymore? Or are we just kidding ourselves?