Deep thoughts...

I've been thinking some deep thoughts today - nothing monumental or earth-shattering, just absorbing the enormity of the shootings at Virginia Tech, trying to take in the far-reaching effects of something like this and just process it in my head.

You know what I can't get past? French class. So many of those kids were just sitting in French class Monday morning, conjugating irregular verbs or discussing the finer points of the subjunctive and then they were shot. killed. I can't stop thinking about this part. Because this? This I get. I have crystal clear memories of sitting in French class on Monday mornings. French was my favorite class - the one where I felt like I belonged, like I truly was learning something and knew what I was doing. French class was peace for me for four (eight including high school) years. It was my (mainly useless to my life) major. Several of the students killed were also French majors. One was a professor. I had aspirations of becoming a French professor at one time.

And why does everyone in our society immediately leap to blame? Can we not just learn all we can before leaping to our conclusions that someone didn't do enough? And can't we just blame the only one who deserves it? What good does criticizing the reaction do now except obscure the greater need? Don't assign blame for what's happened. Take what happened and learn from it. Put plans in place in the horrible event that this happens again. Reach out to troubled students and don't let them get to this point. Act to prevent this, don't talk about who did what wrong in things that can't be changed. You can't change the past - you can learn from it to change the future. This is where our energies should be focused, if they need to be anywhere other than grieving alongside the families and friends who lost loved ones.

Excuse the serious nature of my thoughts tonight. I can't exactly discuss this with my five year old, so it comes out here.

In lighter news, adios Sanjaya. It's about freaking time, America.