There are heroes around us
From Superman to the kids who foiled the Trix Rabbit, there are many heroes who inspire people around the world. At CSC, we do things differently: we are the heroes. From the resident advisors and all other students, to the faculty and all other employees, we do the inspiring.
Resident Advisers are the support system for the students. For example, early last year I was faced with a popcorn catastrophe (the villain), and an RA (the hero) was the one who saved me. I was nuking a bag of popcorn in one of Kent Hall’s public kitchen. I left the room to run an errand, and by the time I came back smoke was filling the kitchen and hallway. I burned the popcorn. I imagined what would ensue: Breaking news: Student fails to use microwave correctly. To read more of his failures, turn to page 2.
What actually happened: an RA came to help me clean the mess, and comforted me by saying something like, “Everyone messes up sometimes. Maybe not this bad, but it will be okay.”
CSC students, in superhero fashion, do many deeds that people generally do not see. Some are small, like one that happened just this week. A student spilled his drink in the café. He could have let a Dining Services employee clean it, but he went out of his way to grab napkins and clean it.
Then, some are bigger, like three that happened last year. The first happened on the first day of school when, upon meeting her roommate, a girl noticed this roommate had a lot of rings on her key chain. The roommate explained that each ring symbolized something special to her. Then, at the end of the school year, after the girl had officially left Chadron, the roommate found a ring this girl had left behind as a symbol of their friendship.
The second was when a student, who spends most of her time working to barely squeak by financially, took a break from her obligations to relax at the movie theater downtown. While in line, there was a young boy ahead of her who said that for his birthday, he was taking his grandmother to see a movie. Touched by this gesture, the student paid for their tickets.
The third was when a student pulled an all nighter to catch up on homework. The next day, during a class I had with the student, there was a coffee and a large note that was placed at the student’s spot. The note said something like, “To help you get through class!”
Of all the people on campus, the ones I view as heroes the most are my teachers. Yes, out of necessity, they cut us down to size by telling us our work is lacking and that our writing has nothing on Clark Kent’s. It is easy to assume they are being overly-harsh and grumble something like, “You hear about that kid who changed his voice too much in his essay? Yeah, his teacher is real hardcore. Last I heard, he locked that student to the crying table twenty-five to life.”
But what the teachers do next, out of their own good will and not of necessity, is make us feel like chosen ones. When they show us how close we are to clarity in our writing, it is as if they say, “CSC has been waiting for you a long time. You may be rough around the edges, but we will make a man out of you. There is a whole new generation coming of age that needs direction. They, no, the whole world, could use a few new heroes, and you will be one of them.”
If there were any heroes on campus who were the Batmans—the ones whose importance is imperative, but sometimes goes unnoticed—it is the all the other employees.
Anyone who was on campus during the last spring semester remembers the twenty-inch snowstorm we had in April. The Dining Services did not have to stay open—everything else was closed—but they did. Had they not, there would have been an innumerable amount of students who would have gone a day or two without any substantive food.
As most of us college students live without parental supervision, we have learned how quickly a mess can pile up. The rate is so awful that it almost seems the only logical reason behind it is that gremlins come into our residence during the night with the sole purpose of multiplying our messes. On campus, the garbage would pile up just like this if it were not for the maintenance employees, who show up as early as 6 a.m. every weekday to work. It is because they cherish this campus that they protect it from gremlins, and for that we are thankful.