When the author first came to Virginia Tech years ago, she realized that family was a value shared by administrators, faculty, and staff. Here, there is a deep caring and sense of responsibility for the well-being of students. As an instructor and a staff member of the Undergraduate Academic Affairs Office in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, she was part of an administrative unit that worked to help students get through the weeks following April 16, 2007 shootings. In this article, the author describes lessons she learned after the tragedy. She learned that grief and its after-effects are personal. No policy or institutional resource can account for confusion, despair, and loss. She learned to examine the way that she and other educators cope with crisis as they help students. She learned that reflecting on their own behavior might help them understand how students react to their academic life during such a time. She also learned that reflection and the ability to think critically have a deep effect on how decisions are made.