#jonathan lacson

[humansofvirginiatech]

“[During] my last semester at West AJ, everybody asked me which moments were most memorable, and I could never come up with one specific thing. There’s a couple that were really important; one was from my first year and one was from my last year. My first year, there was a student (who since graduated) and he was a physics major, but he really wanted to know how physics worked with philosophy. He was really interested in particle physics, and if the world is made up of particles, how does that affect meaning, spiritual or moral or ethical? We had an ongoing conversation over the course of a year, and it just got to the point where during the second semester, he would come directly up to me and we would continue the conversation; we wouldn’t say hi to each other, he would just say ‘I’ve been thinking about this or this’ and we kept continuing that. This became a really meaningful conversation because he was really wrestling with these really important questions; ‘What is the meaning of life,’ ‘What am I doing here,’ ‘What do I want to do with my life,’ ‘How does this impact what I’m interested in’ and it grew into a really great conversation -- I learned as much from him as he learned from me. The second one was an incoming freshman I met last year. She put on the West AJ Facebook page that she needed an egg. I happened to be online and at home and I said ‘Yeah, I have an egg if you want to stop by the Faculty Principal Apartment.’ She came by to borrow an egg and asked what all this was, so I explained more about the Residential College. She started being more active in the community, and I never really asked what the egg was for. But then at the end of the year (last May) I saw her again, and she explained what the egg was for. She said ‘I was really shy, I took a chance, and thank you so much for that egg. I needed to make tempera paint for this project that I was doing, and after that conversation I did something different and it was exhibited, and I got so many more opportunities and much more excited about my time at Virginia Tech - all because you were available to lend me that egg.’”

[humansofvirginiatech]

“Keep learning. It’s easy. Two words. The only way anything is gonna get better on this entire planet; the only way anything is going to get solved is that everybody keeps learning. You don’t go to college to get a degree and do one thing the rest of your life. You go to university to learn a skill set that is perpetual learning: always advancing yourself, always pushing yourself. I want education expanded to every person on the planet too because that is the only salvation for our species: more people, getting smarter and working together in more ways. Keep. Learning.”

[humansofvirginiatech]

“I teach a class on wine, and have been for two decades, and I’ve finally decided to bite the bullet this semester: I’m becoming an entrepreneur. I’m going to start a wine bar in our small quaint community. It’s gonna be refined, elegant — I call it Blacksburg’s first ‘adult bar.’ Not dissing the students, but I want to build a kind of community space where wine is the central theme. Students arewelcome too, but it’s gonna be, I think, more of a professional base because we have a big growing professional class in Blacksburg. It’s been time consuming for me ‘cause I have no background in business and I don’t have a natural inclination for money and it’s hard. [Bursts out into laughter] You think, ‘Oh man, let’s just go start a bar,’ but man it’s hard. I am honestly overwhelmed with that process and, much like with my classes and learning how to film and script, I’m doing that in a whole new venue of life now. It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m becoming a business person. I have to raise money and do licensing and construction. So yeah, I’m drowning in that right now.’"

[humansofvirginiatech]

“In terms of giving back, raffling off the Clemson ticket for charity wasn’t anything I thought would blow up. It just made sense since it was kinda slimy for everyone to be selling those tickets to their own community members at outrageously inflated prices. So, I was thinking if people are willing to pay that much for a football game, why aren’t they willing to pay that much to help out a human who doesn’t have shelter, who doesn’t have food on their plate? It’s kind of hard to put that into perspective because we live in a time where we only want to profit ourselves; we only want to do things for ourselves. I guess the challenging thing is stepping out of that and making sure that what we’re doing is for other people, not just for us.”

[humansofvirginiatech]

“His name is Norman and he’s eight months old. He’s a golden retriever who loves playing with sticks and chasing leaves outside. Norman’s being trained through the SWDR, Service Dogs by Warren Retrievers, and he’ll probably get trained to go with a kid who has autism. He’s very much a cuddlebug and I’m very happy to be training him.”

[humansofvirginiatech]

“We’re the second oldest organization on campus – second oldest student organization next to German club, that is – and we’re going on our 75th year right now. I joined cave club because I’ve always been interested in outdoor activities. I went caving a little bit as a kid, but I didn’t do it enough since. I’m really glad I got involved because it turns out this is a really incredible hotspot for caving in the United States.”

[humansofvirginiatech]

“She has a great job offer, but I don’t really know what I have planned. Like, last week, I was looking up silent meditation retreats in Kentucky at a trappist monastery. Moral of the story is: whether you have a job offer or opportunity lined up after graduation or if you don’t know what you’re doing yet, it’ll all work itself out in the end because you have your friends alongside you.”

[humansofvirginiatech]

“Everyone here, that I’ve met anyway, has been so nice to me. It might have been the same in high school, I guess, but in college everyone starts out as strangers. Coming here to Tech I feel like you get out what you put in — that’s why I’m involved with so many organizations. Seeing the results and seeing all these people smiling at meetings — they’re having a good time and that means I did my job. I feel like just coming here, I want other people to love Tech as much as I love Tech. That’s my goal, I guess as a Hokie.”