I was walking to my 9 am Accounting class in 1996 when a girl opened fire on Penn State's campus. I wasn't in the line of fire, I was walking along the path in front of the building, the shooter was behind that building shooting in the opposite direction. I almost got hit by the car of one of the first responding police officers, and the person I was walking with joked that "somebody must have stolen a doughnut" from the shop in the Student Union.

It took until late morning for most people on campus to find out what happened (information didn't travel quite as fast back then). I remember there being a feeling of disbelief, initially. And though it sounds insensitive to those who got shot that day, that disbelief was quickly replaced with excitement. There were major news media vehicles on campus every day that week, and it caused quite a buzz to have so many students asked to be interviewed for TV. Then, just as quickly as they all arrived, the media left. For me, and several other students I talked to at the time, that's when fear set in. It seems backwards, but seeing the large media and police presence made me forget about the fact that some girl just walked onto my campus with an assault rifle in her pant leg, took it out, and shot random people. When they all left, that realization hit me like a brick.

That incident pales in comparison to what happened yesterday. Like others have already said, my heart goes out to the victims' families and friends who are grieving, the witnesses who have to relive those moments in their minds, and the Virginia Tech population as a whole.