I travelled to Virginia Tech. on April 16th, 2007 with a breaking news team from my student paper, The Daily Tar Heel. After spending 36 hours behind a lens trying to capture everything I was seeing, it left an indelible scar on my idea of human emotion and suffering. It's one thing to see someone crying over a lost life, but another to see an entire community mourning over a loss of nearly 3 dozen.

A year later I returned with another writer to try to take in what was happening with this changing town. I don't feel that I should have been there, looking back, because it's the same story. People are still trying to move on, and failing at it a little less. But I think that's what grieving is all about.