At the time, I thought it was a sign that I never got an actual acceptance letter to Virginia Tech. I remember logging onto the application site one night at the request of my high school counselor; I glanced quickly across the screen, trying to find the proper button to hit to get me where I needed to go.

My gaze slid to a stop when I saw the words, “pay your deposit here,” in the middle of the screen in all-caps. It was such an insignificant moment; I wasn’t anxiously slitting open a thick envelope shaking with excitement, a moment so many of my friends talk about fondly.

I was staring at a glowing laptop screen that—despite the lack of the word, “congratulations,” was telling me that I had been accepted to Virginia Tech—and I felt nothing. I never wanted to go to Virginia Tech; I never even considered applying until my older brother, a freshman at Tech while I was applying to schools, begged me to apply. Even my parents, both alumni of the University of Virginia, told me I had to apply, that it would be a mistake if I didn’t.

My heart was dead-set on another college, but because my family insisted, I applied to Virginia Tech with what could only be described as a begrudging attitude.

Spring rolled around and for one of the first times in my life, so did the rejections; one after another came in, each one with the worst anxiety-riddled word stamped on the pages: waitlisted. Was it worse to be not wanted at all or to be pushed into the category of “you’re not quite good enough”? It felt like being told that I had all the qualifications, but unfortunately didn’t stand out enough to make the cut. I wasn’t special enough.

Before I knew it, I had little to no options and I found myself for the first time facing the possibility of something I had never considered: going to Virginia Tech. Everyone I knew that went to Virginia Tech told me to wait—wait for that moment, they said. You’ll fall in love with Virginia Tech. Just wait until you get to campus. I waited. I went to orientation, had the most incredible orientation leader in the world, and had as good of a time as anyone could have at orientation. But I left with a pit in my stomach; yes, my orientation leader had made me excited about going to college, but I wasn’t excited about where I was going to college.

Though I had heard people talking about going to something called Hokie Camp, I didn’t even bother looking into it—why would I want to go to another experience like orientation where I would be surrounded by people who were in love with Virginia Tech? I’m one of the most outgoing people I know, but I also knew that I could be very good at putting on a front so as to appear like I fit in. I didn’t want to start putting up my fake “I love Virginia Tech” front before classes even started.

So I waited until I got to campus. The entire first semester, my thoughts constantly shifted between knowing that I was loving the college experience in general and knowing that if I was honest with myself, I was unhappy. I didn’t want to be at Virginia Tech; it was so hard to change my mindset from having my heart set on one school my whole life to being thrown into a sea of die hard Hokies. I hated the idea of being a failure though and I didn’t want to think that I failed at Virginia Tech, so I tried everything I could to give Tech a chance. I got into a freshmen leadership program, I joined a sorority, I met some of the most life changing people I’d ever known.

I put up the front of being the most dedicated, in love Hokie you’ve ever met, hoping that if I faked it enough it would become true.

All the while, I had a half filled out transfer application saved on my laptop. There’s a cheesy quote out there that says something along the lines of, “I fell in love the way you fall asleep; slowly, and then all at once.”

I fell in love with Virginia Tech very, very, very slowly (painfully slow)—and then all at once. The slowly part was over the course of my first two years at Virginia Tech. I began to learn that the walls I had built had been constructed from heartbreak; heartbreak that had stemmed from expectations. I had been shutting myself off because of the expectations I had held in my head about where I was supposed to be, and how it was supposed to be. Bit by bit, or more accurately, person by person, I began to see what everyone had been telling me to wait for. I stopped working on my transfer application and instead began spending all my free time looking up to these incredible people I was lucky enough to have for mentors.

These people were Virginia Tech for me. When I wasn’t in love with Virginia Tech, when I couldn’t see past the walls I had built up for so long, they showed me how to open myself up and how to let Virginia Tech love me, so that I could love it. The all at once part happened at Hokie Camp. During my sophomore year, I was hit by how far I had come since crying to my mom on the phone at night when I was a freshman. I realized that the only reason I had stayed was because of my mentors that had made Tech home. I had found reasons to stay, but it took me a while to find them because of all the walls I had built up. I thought to myself, if I could shorten the amount of time it takes for even one incoming student to find their reasons to stay, than everything would be worth it.

That’s how I found myself standing at Smith Mountain Lake on August 10th, 2014, falling in love with Virginia Tech, all at once.

Over the course of four training semesters, two summers, 22 days, and five Hokie Camp campfires, I found myself falling in love with Virginia Tech so quickly and so repeatedly that I felt my heart could burst. Being at Hokie Camp was like being in the most pure form of the Virginia Tech community—I was surrounded by everything that I had been waiting for, and I got to experience it alongside students who were discovering that feeling for the first time.

Every minute I spent at Hokie Camp, all I could think about was channeling the strength and love I had learned from my mentors and trying to find a way to pass those feelings down. All I ever wanted was to convey that no matter where you were on the road to falling in love with Virginia Tech—no matter how in love you were, or how against it you felt—that all you had to do was stay. Wait for those people that could show you how to let Virginia Tech love you.

My whole heart ached with the hope that these students, having already taken their first step by going to Hokie Camp, could leave for school having found even one of those people.

Today, nothing makes me feel more at home at Virginia Tech than when I see Hokie campers on campus with their people. Nothing has ever given me more joy than hearing two weeks, or two years, down the road how in love they are with Virginia Tech. I was lucky enough to find my people, and lucky enough to have them save me from leaving a school that has become a part of my very being.

I’ve been even luckier to have 22 days of helping incoming students fall in love with Virginia Tech. I was extraordinarily blessed to have experienced the majority of those 22 days with 13 people who held inside each of them the love and selflessness that makes people fall head over heels for Virginia Tech. I wouldn’t be as deeply in love with Virginia Tech if it weren’t for the people that helped me on the road to becoming the person I had always aspired to be. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I never once imagined myself coming to Virginia Tech; I wasted so much time planning when I could leave, asking myself if I was out of the woods yet.

I never would have expected finding my home, right there, in the woods. Looking at it now, I’ve never been happier to have been so wrong.

Sports have always been my thing. I started playing soccer when I was three. It was my first love, but I never thought 19 years later it would be the reason I landed my first job.

Growing up, I was a tomboy and always wanted to spend my time around anything to do with sports. With a fitness instructor mom, a football coach father, and an extremely athletic older brother, sports were always happening around our home. SportsCenter was the show of choice in the Conklin household and schedules were always made around weekday practices and weekend tournaments.

Blacksburg, Virginia became home for me after a late recruiting process. My mom went to Virginia Tech, and as a little girl, I dreamt of playing soccer in the ACC for the Hokies. My dad knew how badly I wanted to be a Hokie, but we kept to what extent of it from my mom knowing she wouldn’t be able to hold it in.

I’ll never forget leaving Blacksburg after a soccer camp in 2010 crying to my dad in the car about how badly I felt Tech was the place for me. I didn’t know why. I just had this feeling and knew it was where I needed to be.

My recruiting process was interrupted during my sophomore year in high school when my dad was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. Soccer was my emotional and mental outlet, but searching for schools fell far down my to-do list.

It became an even less important “to-do” when he passed away January 20, 2011 when I was a junior in high school.

My dream came true a few months later when I received a call from Chugger Adair, the head coach of Virginia Tech, on my way home from an indoor track meet. He invited me up for a visit on campus. I remember trying my hardest to keep my cool, but once I hung up, I screamed at the top of my lungs with tears streaming down my face. My mom did the same when I called her after I caught my breath.

I visited campus once more and committed on April 2, 2011. Five years later, I look back at my four years on the Virginia Tech women’s soccer team and truly feel like I have accomplished my childhood dream; the only thing I ever really envisioned as a child.

I earned a scholarship after my freshman year, we made it to the College Cup my sophomore year, and I earned a starting position by my junior year. I had an assist on my first and last games on Thompson field, and even as a defender, I scored a collegiate goal.

It was more than I could have imagined when I was that little girl just wanting to be a part of the Virginia Tech soccer team.

Five years later, I also look forward to a new dream that came to life during my time in Blacksburg, one that finally answers the question of why Blacksburg seemed so special to me when I was in high school. Yes, it is a special place. I think anyone who has ever visited Blacksburg, Virginia will tell you that there is something about it. And they can’t quite say what it is; you just have to experience it for yourself.

For me, Blacksburg is the place where my dreams have come true. Both soccer and my dream of being a sports broadcaster – neither would have been accomplished or put me on the path to accomplishing them if it wasn’t for the time I spent at Virginia Tech.

Since sixth grade I wanted to be an orthodontist. I love teeth. I had braces when I was younger and loved them. I also like working with people and loved the idea of being able to help people with their confidence through helping them with their smile.

That aspiration came to an end after my first semester at school.

I was a straight-A student in high school and got a C in the science major biology class, which was a required class. I would make sure I got 100’s on all my homework grades because I knew I was going to fail the tests. After making a four-year plan of the classes needed to graduate, I called my mom, believing I was having a premature quarter-life crisis and knowing I wasn’t cut out to be a science major.

Then came the real issue of having to figure out what I wanted as my major and what I wanted do with my life after soccer. I felt like a failure because all I knew was that I liked sports and working with people, but that’s just what led me to broadcasting.

My dad’s brother, also my godfather, works in an industry surrounded by professional athletes and celebrities. To this day I call New Jersey my second home due to all the time we spent visiting him as a child. Visiting him threw me into a world where all these professional athletes were around.

Through those experiences I was reminded that, at the core, they are just normal people. The time we spent around different celebrities made me comfortable interacting with them. Charles Barkley once told me and my brother he would kick our asses if we didn’t do well in school – see – normal.

After realizing how important it was to work with people and how much I l loved the sports industry, I decided sports broadcasting would be a dream career for me.

As an athlete, I know my story, and I know every single athlete has his or her own story. I love that – I want to share those stories.

I switched my major to Multimedia Journalism, and one of my first assignments was to interview a professional in the field I wanted to work in. As a member of the athletic department, I knew people worked to cover the Tech sports’ games but didn’t know who they were or exactly what they did.

I googled “Virginia Tech sports broadcasting” and came across Bill Roth’s name. I knew the legendary name Bill Roth, Voice of the Hokies, as he had called Virginia Tech football and basketball for 27 years.

I didn’t want to seem like an inexperienced student by reaching out, even though I was, so I emailed Andrew Allegretta. Andrew is the Assistant Director of Broadcasting and voice of the baseball and women’s basketball teams.

Little did I know that email would be the beginning of an incredible journey.

I learned Andrew was in charge of the student broadcaster internship through IMG at Virginia Tech. When we met, he explained that they call all the Virginia Tech Olympic sports games, so his students were the ones covering my games. My interest was sparked, but it was going to be somewhat of a challenge to find my niche.

Andrew mentioned they had not had women in the internship before. He thought I would be a good addition to their soccer coverage, but more importantly, he was willing to work with me to create opportunities. I mentioned I was interested in sideline reporting and we worked together to create that position for ESPN3 games.

To this day I am so thankful to him for helping me create a position that would give me the best experience possible.

I started in the internship in the fall of my junior year doing color commentary for the men’s soccer games on HokiesXtra. Then Andrew was brave enough in the spring to put me on my first ESPN3 broadcast – covering Clemson vs. Virginia Tech baseball. I’m not sure why he trusted me, but it was probably because he knew I had been studying every possible sideline hit and post game interview done by Samantha Ponder that I could find.

That brings me to today; I have worked four ESPN3 games as a color commentator for men’s soccer and women’s volleyball and over 10 games on the sideline covering all different sports such as softball, baseball, women’s lacrosse, men’s soccer, and men’s and women’s basketball.

I also worked with Andrew and covered the 2015 Virginia Tech spring football game. By far one of the most surreal moments of my short career was working that game and interviewing Bud Foster on the sideline in Lane Stadium.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that they let little me cover ACC basketball and football, but I am forever indebted to the ones who trusted me enough to be out there.

After my senior season as a member of the soccer team, I really focused on post-graduate opportunities. As an ACC student athlete, there are opportunities within a post-graduate internship program called ACC Futures. There are six companies that hire ACC Futures Interns.

In order to get an interview, I had to pass the application round through my school and then once again through the ACC. By the time interviews came around I was one of 16 students interviewing for six openings with companies such as the ACC, the Orange Bowl, Fox Sports South, and Fox Sports Florida.

When I met with Fox Sports Florida, I knew they were one of my top choices. The job description was something that I was extremely interested in, and once I met with one of the producers within the company, I was hooked. We had a 30-minute interview and then a 15-minute break after the fact. I went into my interview a few minutes early and ended up missing my break because I was talking with them for so long.

One week later I got a call; they offered me a position at Fox Sports Florida as a production intern. At the time of the call, I was actually in San Francisco for Super Bowl 50 weekend with my brother and godparents. To this day, that was the best weekend of my life.

My story has highs and lows, but now I look back and know exactly why I cried to my dad about wanting to go to school at Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech is where everything was made possible.

As for the future, I don’t know what it holds, but all I know is I am moving to Florida in a few months with an open mind and thankful heart, ready to enjoy the ride.

I grew up in Loudoun County Virginia, also known as one of the richest counties in America.

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a teacher. I tutored in high school and even took a Teachers Cadet course my senior year of high school. For the most part, it is the only career I could honestly see myself doing. I was attending Virginia Tech in the fall and after I graduated I would move back into the home I grew up and spend my life teaching in Loudoun.

My first year of school went well, my goals stayed pretty much the same. I started applying for jobs near me working with kids. After many applications and interviews, I was hired as the Summer Programs Coordinator one county over.

The town I worked in was about forty five minutes from my home. It was such a great opportunity that the commute was worth it, and I had actually lived there for about two years when I was very young so I thought it would be cool to come back and work there for a few summers. I was told that my job was to make PE lesson plans for day care kids for the summer. This was very exciting for me because I wanted to teach and getting to make all these fun summer lesson plans and then teach them was a dream for me. I spent the first month of the job doing all this research and making all these cute little themed activities.

I had guest speakers planned, I had met my staff, everything was organized to a T and I was beyond excited for the following Monday when I would get to meet my kids for the summer and start my program.

That Monday could be described as the worst Monday as my life I’m pretty sure.

I get to the school at 8:45; the kids are supposed to be there at nine. I have all my supplies out and ready, the other counselors are there and we are just waiting for the daycare to show up. Well they did show up but approximately an hour after they were scheduled to come. And they make an entrance. We have kids running around bouncing off the walls and teachers screaming. Finally they all sit down and I introduce myself and try to explain the first game. The kids did not want any part of that game. It was too complicated for the kindergardeners and too boring for the fifth graders. Luckily my staff has worked with these kids in the past and help me mediate between us and find better games for them to play. Those were the longest two hours though and I’m pretty sure I went home and cried that night.

After a similar first week I realized that my lesson plans would have to change. All the kids wanted to do was play basketball and sharks and minnows. So I made some adjustments and things got better in terms of that. But then I began to notice some serious behavioral issues.

I think it was my second or third week when I had to deal with my first (of many fights). These kids had some serious anger issues that continued all through the summer. They would get too into the games and storm off or worse attack one another. This job was completely wearing me down. I came home and went to bed at eight pm because of how emotionally exhausted I was. I had so many kids who just hated me and everything I represented.

I began to learn more about these children though.

Especially that most of them were foster kids or came from some sort family background that was less than spectacular. As the days continued on I really got to know the kids better and my perspective started to change. The first thing I noticed about them was that they were very protective of each other. These kids were a family to each other and when they weren’t fighting each other, they were fighting others in defense of each other. The kids may seem to hate me or my staff but you can tell they have a lot of love to give by the way they interact.

The kids really had an issue about things being equal between each other and they would often complain if something was unfair. We worked really hard to reiterate that we were doing the best we can to maintain equality, but there was only so much to be done. I had one child who would completely storm to the top of the bleachers if things were unfair.

I had another who would climb to the top of the support beams.

This was obviously less than fun to deal with, but as I continued working I began to realize that maybe things weren’t so even for them in their other aspects of life. This big realization really opened my eyes to these children.

As opposed to dreading my job in the mornings, I anticipated it. I loved coming in the morning and working with the kids. Because I fell in love with each and every one of them despite their struggles. Obviously we still had fights, we still had temper tantrums and we struggled to find games to that satisfied the masses.

But overall the summer took a complete turn in the beginning of July. My absolute favorite week of the summer was when we took the kids to the roller rink for a week. A very small percentage of these kids had ever done it and there was a lot of falling and some giving up.

But for the most part the children were determined to do well.

They wanted to impress my staff as the week went on. And the progress they made was amazing. I cannot even tell you how proud I was of those kids by the end of the week. You would never have known by looking at them Friday that their first time on skates was that Monday. These kids were destined for great things and I loved that I got to be a part of it.

The end of the summer eventually rolled around, I was returning to Tech that weekend. It was my last day and I’ll be honest, I cried when I left. The kids who absolutely hated me at the beginning of summer actually hugged me before I left. I had fallen in love with these kids, even more so for the tough times they had faced. Coming back to school I realized that I wanted to do more. I want to spend my life working with kids like this. Kids who need a little support in their back corner.

Because of that, I know I will never return to Loudoun County to teach. There are so many places that need people to care for the underdogs or the ones who often get cast aside. My real dream is to travel to Africa and teach to children there.

But if that never happens I know I will be able to stay in Southwest Virginia or any other struggling county and be a part of the change. Education is so important and there are so many students not getting the kind they deserve and I want to decrease that number one by one.