Author's Note

Im just one of those anonymous faces that walks the quad at two in the afternoon; behind all of those faces is a story.
 -Aarons Story

Courage and wisdom: those are the two characteristics common to all of the people whose stories are represented here. They were willing to share their very personal experiences with people they had never met simply because they believed that their stories might help others. The challenges these students encountered and the obstacles they overcame gave them new perspectives and profound realizations that they wanted to communicate to others, in the hope that others could learn from their experiences. The perceptions gained were hard-won but that made them all the more valuable. No one I interviewed wished they could erase their difficult experiences from their lives; everyone stressed the positive things that had happened to them as a result of what they had endured.

All of the participants volunteered their stories. They responded to an ad in the college newspaper, to flyers posted around campus and in the college counseling centers, or to e-mail sent to the students involved with the Department of Health Education. They shared their experiences in interviews that were then converted into the narratives that appear here. Some of the students were telling their stories publicly for the first time, while others had already communicated them through writing, photography, or in other forums. Many were or had been in counseling at the time of their interviews and credited therapy with helping them come to terms with what they had been through. It seemed that counseling made them feel at ease discussing their experiences and helped them to tell their stories for the book. Not all of the students felt comfortable using their real first names or their images, however; these stories are marked with asterisks to indicate that the name has been changed. There were various reasons for their hesitance; in some cases, the story might have affected their ability to get security-sensitive jobs in the future and in other cases, the story involved or impacted others (most often family members) whom the student did not want to expose.

The people in this book shared their stories because they believed that hearing about their experiences might help someone else. They wanted other students to know that they are not alone and to help all of us work towards a community that supports and cares about its members. As Aaron suggested in his interview, there is a story behind every face that you pass on campus-this book contains only a few. I hope you will be as moved by reading them as I was by hearing them.

Last Modified 12/22/2005