Let me tell you something, though in creative works like these I am supposed to show and not tell, and though I may regret being so personal when my depressing rage dies down, like those feelings tend to do.

Let me tell you this: There are times, though seldom, when I hate being a journalist.

Journalism is, in the widest sense, the field of bearing news, and that can be a fascinating thing to do. Though by definition, it can be a job of bearing bad news, which weighs heavily on you when five students – five kids, five colleagues – die in a fire.

In fact, it saddens me to tears, to rage, to anger and to a sense of helpless frustration I have not felt in years.

And feelings like that are not easily swayed or escaped. Curing them takes a change of scenery and deep thought. So on Sunday afternoon, I left the newsroom as soon as I could and headed North on Interstate 71.

I-71 is a highway that has always been there for me when I needed it most. With about 243 miles of four-lane pavement, it connects Cleveland to Cincinnati. For all practical purposes and for a lack of a more exciting road, it is Ohio’s main nerve, twisting slowly through all the stereotypical scenery of the Midwest – running through drab fields of dead crops and towns with names I can never remember.

Thus, I never really knew why I felt pulled to that simple stretch of highway. Maybe because it was – though not this time – the way home for me, an arrow back to the east side of Cleveland, though one broken by constant construction as it flies back into the heart of the city I still feel compelled to call home.

I had no plans to go that far Sunday – to ride it until it dumps into Interstate 271 – though I had the time, the late afternoon sun still above the service sticker on my windshield.

But even when I don’t travel home, that road is one of solace, for it is the kind of fast driving that has helped the meditation of my heroes: Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson.

It is a place to think, providing the droning consistency needed for clear thought and metaphysical retrospection. As I passed signs numbering the miles to Mansfield, I thought about what each small town thought of itself, or if they thought at all – or needed to – since these communities have a habit of making the humble, patchwork character of the highway whether they are self-aware or not.

And I thought about where I lived, how my locale shapes who I am and why. Too, I felt guilty, pushing down the accelerator and swerving into the center lane to avoid any latent traffic as I passed Polaris. I have written about the danger of campus, written that the recklessness and the intensity keeping kids out all night is a very fascinating thing to be a part of, especially when those elements are compounded by youth.

With a pang of regret, I remember labeling campus a fight town, and realizing that I sometimes got a bizarre sense of satisfaction from living someplace that can go in any direction at any moment.

But I never expected a tragedy like Sunday’s.

Tragedy is a very difficult thing to deal with on many levels. It is horribly sad for everyone, even those hearing about it in all the places that the news travels; people watching television in the local diners and the small white farmhouses heading northbound from Columbus.

For me, it hits even harder. These kids were my peers. Kids I may have nodded to on the street. People who have maybe read my work. People I may have even been writing for and didn’t even know it. People with a myriad of definitions to many others.

In this way, the fire is a shattering of the invincibility that we students imagine and relish in while we are here. And that shattering is chilling – a reminder of the main element of tragedy: that it can happen to anyone at any time. To my friends. To my family. To me.

And maybe that is a valuable lesson, though not at this cost – with the loss of five lives.

Not with another day in the history of this school carved from fire and destruction; another day living in infamy.

John Ross is a senior in comparative studies. He can be reached at [email protected].