“What's a motto with you?”
Maddy Sault is back on the blog today to talk about what Ut Prosim means to her.
Frozen wind ripped through me as I walked to my 9am in McBryde -- rushing me from all directions in true Blacksburg fashion and pushing my thoughts far from the full day ahead to the comfort of the bed I’d just left. It was my first winter in Blacksburg, and foggy February mornings had quickly become the bane of my existence. I shut my eyes and burrowed deeper into my winter coat, resigning myself to the growing redness in my forehead and cheeks, and deeply regretting my scheduling choices. I trudged past Newman and waited, penguin style, in a huddled group of cold and tired students for a break in the river of cars making their way from Alumni Mall to the Drillfield.
“What’s our motto? Nothing! What’s a motto with you?”
The cheery Lion King reference snapped me far enough out of my frozen pool of self-pity to crack my eyes open against the wind that attacked me. A young woman in a bright orange coat and maroon hat stood, head high, at the front of a group of high school-aged students who looked just as cold as I felt.
“But really,” she continued, “Ask anyone you see, even those people freezing across the street over there, and they’ll be able to tell you Virginia Tech’s motto without hesitation. I fell in love with this school because we choose to know Ut Prosim and to live it instead of resigning it as some old phrase from a dead language. Understanding its meaning and how it relates to us in our daily lives is an integral aspect of who we are as Hokies.”
The cars parted and my group advanced past the high schoolers and their parents, nodding and exchanging “excuse me’s” as the Hokie Ambassador continued her speech, projecting her voice valiantly over the howl of the wind as it blew through the pylons.
New students arrive every August brimming with excitement and trepidation. The majority participated in tours much like the one I passed that winter morning, where they heard firsthand about the reasons why other students chose the university. Every one of them attended Orientation, where Virginia Tech’s values were further discussed and elaborated upon, but if they are anything like I was, they have yet to learn about the true meaning of embracing Virginia Tech’s motto.
While I wrote enthusiastically about my excitement for things like The Big Event and Relay for Life in the essay section of my application for the university, I saw service as just that: huge, grand gestures made once or twice a year in order to make me feel just as good as the people I was helping. “Living a life of service” meant going about my own life and fitting volunteer opportunities in whenever I found them convenient. That definition has changed over the course of my time here, and I owe some of that change to the Hokie Ambassador I passed on my way to class almost three years ago.
Don’t get me wrong -- service opportunities like The Big Event are valuable and exciting ways for students to reach out to the community, but it’s important to remember that more must be done. I’ve come to realize that the key to living a life of Ut Prosim is less about assisting others and more about putting them first. It’s about removing yourself from the equation and making a cognizant decision to ask yourself about the needs of those around you, instead of fitting their well-being in whatever spaces which aren’t taken over by your own contentment. This sounds scary, and honestly a little self-sacrificial, but it’s a lot less intense than it may seem. Living mindfully and selflessly can start with something as small as waving at the driver who pauses in their own commute to let you cross the street, or choosing to get out of bed, don a bright orange coat, and smile through the violent wind of a February morning in Blacksburg.