A few weeks ago during New Student Orientation, I was working to help students who were a part of the University Studies department (and unsure on their eventual major) pick out their classes for the fall semester. One morning, I approach a group of students and ask them how their day is going, before we got started with the long, 1.5 hour session about what US is, how to navigate HokieSPA (the online course registration portal/system), and the like.
My day is going pretty shittily.
Quite frankly the profanity caught me off-guard but this was the response of one student in that group. In an effort to see what I could do to make him feel better, I asked him why his day was going so badly. He shares a bomb-shell with me. His life-long companion, his dog had passed away just before he come to Orientation. My heart sank. I was reeling, so I could only imagine how badly he felt.
I know that coming to college is such an intense transition anyways, so I couldn’t even fathom the sadness this student was feeling as he was trying to get his way through the 1.5 day Orientation and follow that by trying to cope with his immense loss. I mean I know that I’ve only had Charlotte, my beagle-hound mix, for two years this month. I’d be devastated if she were to pass away unexpectedly. Or even expectedly. Yikes, losing pets is the worst, regardless.
So after the session was complete, I was trying to think of something that I could do for this student to make him feel better. I thought and thought and thought but I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t be super weird. So I decided to settle on something relatively simple. I took a business card out of my wallet, and I wrote…
” [insert his dog’s name] will always be a Hokie. <3 VT “
I handed the card to the student as he left, and he said thanks. I wasn’t sure if anything would come from it, but I told him that if he ever needed anything while he was on campus, than to be sure to reach out to me. For me, I had to do that. I would have felt absolutely horrible knowing that maybe there was something I COULD have done; but hadn’t. So although it was still a bit odd to me, I was happy that I put my best foot forward in maybe, just maybe, being there for that student when he needed something to take the edge off.
Fast forward a week, and I’m working for the week in Richmond. One night, I check my cell phone and got an e-mail with the subject line “Thanks.” The student wrote,
Hey Justin, thank you for being so kind last week during orientation. Obviously it wasn’t easy for me being there when [insert his dog’s name] died but your kindness and helpfulness definitely helped to make it less difficult. When I first visited Virginia Tech around this time last year for a tour I remember seeing you and it was immediately obvious that everyone on campus respected you. I can’t really say for sure whether listening to your story about being brought up a mountain by your friends convinced me I wanted to attend VT but it certainly didn’t hurt the idea that it seemed to be a nice school with great students and faculty. So once again thank you for being such a nice person because it really meant a lot to me.
Just goes to show…you never know who’s watching, you never know how your act of kindness might make someone’s day, and you never, ever know the true impact that you may have on people. I’m so happy that my nervous, likely awkard gesture meant a lot to him.
#UtProsim