This blog is dedicated to the students in Montgomery County Public Schools.  I’m hopeful that some of the students from the schools I’ve been able to visit read this (Blacksburg Middle School, Auburn Middle School, Christiansburg Middle School, and soon, Shawsville Middle School).  To you students who read this post: think about the importance of friends, community, caring for one another (even strangers, too!), and following your passion, no matter where that may lead you and no matter what others may suggest.

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One thing I can’t get over is how often people suggest, to me, that I just stayed here in Blacksburg for graduate school because of various reasons:

• You drank the Hokie Kool-Aid
• You wanted to continue your undergraduate experience into graduate school
• You knew nothing else – why would you move on? It’s all you’ve ever known

When I hear these things, two things are very obvious: they don’t know me very well, and they don’t understand what I value in the least bit.  As of late, I have been even more likely to share, gladly, proudly, and widely, the reason I wanted to stay here.

Community.

When graduation came last May, I was living strongly and confidently in my motto, “life is all about what you do for other people.” I was continuing to not just meet one new person everyday, but to engage with them and learn about them.  I truly felt as if I had more to offer this community that was fantastic, amazing, and beautiful. 

I’ve said before, in a previous blog post, that my primary reason for staying at Virginia Tech for my Masters in Higher Education was one thing: community.  And to be honest, it’s not even the Virginia Tech community. It’s the community that I get to see when I walk into Harding Avenue Elementary School every week.  It’s the community that I got to see by sitting on the couch of a local family last Sunday talking with them about adopting their future daughter from the Dominican Republic. It’s the community that I got to see at Auburn Middle School in Riner last semester.

It’s the community that I get to FEEL and see when I walk into Kroger to just grab a gallon of milk, but get stopped by two parents who are thanking me for speaking in an assembly at their kid’s school.  It’s the other parents who are colleagues at the university who thanked me for my service to their children at another school.  It’s the relationship with my little brother that I got to establish through Big Brothers Big Sisters.  And it’s the community that I got to see last week in Blacksburg Middle School as I spoke to them in another assembly, about not bullying, understanding the differences of others, and appreciating them all at the same time.

In a perfect world (at least what is my ‘perfect’ this week, because let’s be real – it changes on the daily) I would get to travel the world and speak motivationally about not letting my disability stop me and about Actively Caring.  But since you don’t get to make a living off of that (yet), my sights are currently set in providing leadership training and service orientation to students in higher education who don’t yet understand the power of those two ideas.

But even as I position myself to be able to speak in an informed way to others about those ideas, it’s messages like those below that remind me that, even still, I’ve got much to learn about the impact that you can truly make on other people when given the opportunity. It can be a small gesture, or it can be a big gesture but little things like taking the time to say thank you, and genuinely caring about someone’s emotions and feelings are paramount to making others feel included.

 

 

Over the past week, I have had numerous Virginia Tech staff, Tech students, community members, and otherwise approach me about the talks at the Blacksburg Middle last week. Needless to say, I am so appreciative that the Actively Caring team chose ME to help continue inspiring these students toward leading their lives in an Actively Caring way.