Post by The Big PINK One♥ on Aug 20, 2007 18:32:37 GMT -5
Megan Prendergast was twice questioned by her parents. Her mother asked once, and so did her father. The gist of the conversation went something like this: "Are you sure you want to go back there?"
Going back to Virginia Tech, but 'it's going to be weird'
Dragons, drums and other small wonders
Megan Prendergast was twice questioned by her parents. Her mother asked once, and so did her father. The gist of the conversation went something like this: "Are you sure you want to go back there?"
Megan was steadfast. "I'm 100 percent," the 2006 Lakeville North High School graduate said. "There's nowhere else I want to be than Tech."
Tech, in this case, is Virginia Tech.
When Prendergast arrived in the college town of Blacksburg, Va., a year ago, Virginia Tech was a school largely known for producing engineers and for its good football program. Her mother said it was as if she and her husband had "tucked our daughter in to the Blue Ridge Mountains."
Today -- the first day of classes at Virginia Tech -- the school in the southwest corner of the state is known for much more than its academics. It was a little more than four months ago when Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting spree and turned the pastoral campus into the site of the nation's most deadly school shooting.
It was early on the morning of April 16 when Cho killed two people in a residence hall. Later that morning, he opened fire in an academic building. He killed 32 others that morning before committing suicide.
That's why Prendergast doesn't completely know what to expect on the dawn of a new school year.
"I think we're going to get through it, but it's going to be weird," Prendergast said last week before returning to campus. "I'm very anxious to be back; I want to be there.
"I don't think anybody is going back scared. None of us are scared, none of us think it's going to happen again. It's just gong to be weird to see Norris [the building where most of the shootings occurred] and weird to be back there. I don't think anybody can predict what we're going to feel when we see it all again."
Virginia Tech isn't the school of choice for many Minnesota high schoolers. A year ago, there were seven undergraduates and seven graduate students in a student body of more than 25,000.
At least two incoming freshmen from the state will take their first classes today. Riley Prendergast has joined her older sister in Blacksburg while Michella Drapac, also of Lakeville, is a freshman as well.
"I saw it on the news"
Megan Prendergast has total recall of the events of April 16 and the days that followed.
Fortunately, she wasn't on campus that day. Having spent the weekend visiting friends in Boston, she was at the airport when she first learned something was going on.
"I saw it on the news while on the phone with my mother," Prendergast said. "I said, 'That really looks like Virginia Tech.' Then it said on the screen that there were three dead. I frantically called all of my friends because I have a friend who lived on the fourth floor in [West Ambler Johnson, where the initial shootings took place]."
By the time she landed at LaGuardia Airport to catch a connecting flight, the death toll had grown to 22. During the ride from Roanoke to Blacksburg, Prendergast saw ambulances that were transporting shooting victims.
"That was the first time I was close to it," she said. "That was the first emotional, 'Wow, this is really happening.' "
The days leading up to an on-campus memorial service were difficult.
"No one I knew was in the dorms, no one wanted to be there," Prendergast said. "We know so many people who have apartments or houses, and they were pretty much crammed. No one wanted to be in their dorm, no one wanted to be alone.
"No TV was off, every television was on the news and we were constantly watching it. That's pretty much how it went for days. We constantly watched the news, and that's probably the worst thing we could have done."
Before classes resumed, Prendergast's family made an impromptu visit.
Her mother, Nancy Prendergast, recalled: "My husband had been in Pittsburgh [for work], and he drove down to see her and Riley and I flew in." Nancy Prendergast, a science teacher at Rahn Elementary School in Eagan, said it was a natural reaction for parents. "I couldn't have let her go back to school Monday without seeing her. I think we wanted to touch her. We talked on the phone all the time, and we just wanted to touch her and make sure she was OK."
The end of the school year provided at least a little closure for Prendergast. There were some uncomfortable moments, including when she visited her friend's dorm room.
"Walking in there it was very weird," Prendergast said. "It was like, 'Wow, people were killed in here.' It makes your stomach flip.
"I had a class right next to Norris. Knowing that you've been by there a million times. I've never been in it, but I've been past it, and I have friends that have had classes in there; it's very weird."
While the cable networks had wall-to-wall coverage of the shootings - and it was on the mind of nearly everyone across the country -- neither Drapac nor Riley Prendergast second-guessed their college decisions.
True to her school
"My parents, they both came to me and said it was a big thing, but they didn't want the decisions of one person [the shooter] to affect my decision to go somewhere," Drapac said.
Said Nancy Prendergast: "Riley had mailed her acceptance just the week before. She never flinched either. Riley was convinced that was where she wanted to go. The whole tragedy never changed her mind."
But for Megan Prendergast, the actions of April 16 showed her just how fragile things can be.
"You hear about Columbine, and you hear about that stuff, and you say, 'Oh, no, that's not going to happen here. I'm going to Virginia Tech, a beautiful place in the middle of a quiet, nice college town,' " she said. "But when it happens in a place like that, it's kind of like, 'Wow it could happen anywhere.' "
Going back to Virginia Tech, but 'it's going to be weird'
Dragons, drums and other small wonders
Megan Prendergast was twice questioned by her parents. Her mother asked once, and so did her father. The gist of the conversation went something like this: "Are you sure you want to go back there?"
Megan was steadfast. "I'm 100 percent," the 2006 Lakeville North High School graduate said. "There's nowhere else I want to be than Tech."
Tech, in this case, is Virginia Tech.
When Prendergast arrived in the college town of Blacksburg, Va., a year ago, Virginia Tech was a school largely known for producing engineers and for its good football program. Her mother said it was as if she and her husband had "tucked our daughter in to the Blue Ridge Mountains."
Today -- the first day of classes at Virginia Tech -- the school in the southwest corner of the state is known for much more than its academics. It was a little more than four months ago when Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting spree and turned the pastoral campus into the site of the nation's most deadly school shooting.
It was early on the morning of April 16 when Cho killed two people in a residence hall. Later that morning, he opened fire in an academic building. He killed 32 others that morning before committing suicide.
That's why Prendergast doesn't completely know what to expect on the dawn of a new school year.
"I think we're going to get through it, but it's going to be weird," Prendergast said last week before returning to campus. "I'm very anxious to be back; I want to be there.
"I don't think anybody is going back scared. None of us are scared, none of us think it's going to happen again. It's just gong to be weird to see Norris [the building where most of the shootings occurred] and weird to be back there. I don't think anybody can predict what we're going to feel when we see it all again."
Virginia Tech isn't the school of choice for many Minnesota high schoolers. A year ago, there were seven undergraduates and seven graduate students in a student body of more than 25,000.
At least two incoming freshmen from the state will take their first classes today. Riley Prendergast has joined her older sister in Blacksburg while Michella Drapac, also of Lakeville, is a freshman as well.
"I saw it on the news"
Megan Prendergast has total recall of the events of April 16 and the days that followed.
Fortunately, she wasn't on campus that day. Having spent the weekend visiting friends in Boston, she was at the airport when she first learned something was going on.
"I saw it on the news while on the phone with my mother," Prendergast said. "I said, 'That really looks like Virginia Tech.' Then it said on the screen that there were three dead. I frantically called all of my friends because I have a friend who lived on the fourth floor in [West Ambler Johnson, where the initial shootings took place]."
By the time she landed at LaGuardia Airport to catch a connecting flight, the death toll had grown to 22. During the ride from Roanoke to Blacksburg, Prendergast saw ambulances that were transporting shooting victims.
"That was the first time I was close to it," she said. "That was the first emotional, 'Wow, this is really happening.' "
The days leading up to an on-campus memorial service were difficult.
"No one I knew was in the dorms, no one wanted to be there," Prendergast said. "We know so many people who have apartments or houses, and they were pretty much crammed. No one wanted to be in their dorm, no one wanted to be alone.
"No TV was off, every television was on the news and we were constantly watching it. That's pretty much how it went for days. We constantly watched the news, and that's probably the worst thing we could have done."
Before classes resumed, Prendergast's family made an impromptu visit.
Her mother, Nancy Prendergast, recalled: "My husband had been in Pittsburgh [for work], and he drove down to see her and Riley and I flew in." Nancy Prendergast, a science teacher at Rahn Elementary School in Eagan, said it was a natural reaction for parents. "I couldn't have let her go back to school Monday without seeing her. I think we wanted to touch her. We talked on the phone all the time, and we just wanted to touch her and make sure she was OK."
The end of the school year provided at least a little closure for Prendergast. There were some uncomfortable moments, including when she visited her friend's dorm room.
"Walking in there it was very weird," Prendergast said. "It was like, 'Wow, people were killed in here.' It makes your stomach flip.
"I had a class right next to Norris. Knowing that you've been by there a million times. I've never been in it, but I've been past it, and I have friends that have had classes in there; it's very weird."
While the cable networks had wall-to-wall coverage of the shootings - and it was on the mind of nearly everyone across the country -- neither Drapac nor Riley Prendergast second-guessed their college decisions.
True to her school
"My parents, they both came to me and said it was a big thing, but they didn't want the decisions of one person [the shooter] to affect my decision to go somewhere," Drapac said.
Said Nancy Prendergast: "Riley had mailed her acceptance just the week before. She never flinched either. Riley was convinced that was where she wanted to go. The whole tragedy never changed her mind."
But for Megan Prendergast, the actions of April 16 showed her just how fragile things can be.
"You hear about Columbine, and you hear about that stuff, and you say, 'Oh, no, that's not going to happen here. I'm going to Virginia Tech, a beautiful place in the middle of a quiet, nice college town,' " she said. "But when it happens in a place like that, it's kind of like, 'Wow it could happen anywhere.' "
