These past few months have been heartbreaking. Jon Lacina, a student in our Graphic Design program went missing in January, and although many of us on campus held out hope that he would be found--maybe with amnesia, maybe just having wanted to disappear for awhile--his body was found a week ago in the boiler room of an old, abandoned barn on campus property.

I feel like I don't even have a right to feel so sad about this because I didn't know him or his family. But I walked around campus all winter and spring, thinking about where he could possibly be, suspecting that he was still somewhere on campus, possibly hidden someplace made inaccessible by the snow and ice we were hammered with this year. And, in fact, the building where he was found was one that I've driven or biked past many times, and just thinking about that poor kid dying out there all alone makes me want to cry.

By all accounts he was kind, funny, but introverted, and showed great promise as an artist. We don't know yet how he died, and I'm not sure it matters, although I hate thinking about the possibility that he suffered. I don't think this campus will ever feel the same to me. 

My life now seems completely frivolous, especially when I think about what I was doing on the night when he was probably dying on the cold, dirty floor of that barn. I just can't think about reading challenges or much of anything else.