We Are......

I remember the first time I heard it.  I was a junior in high school following around an overly energetic tour guide wearing a dark blue polo.  She was showing off buildings, talking about student teacher ratios, and explaining the campus police system as I listened with half an ear.  It wasn't that I didn't care, but with college still two years down the road, it was hard to imagine studying at such an important looking library or reading books on the HUB lawn.  That was when it happened.  One of the many students bustling about stopped for a moment, smiled at our group of prospective students, and screamed...

"WE ARE!"

The passerby's automatically looked up, forgetting their busy schedules for a second as they without hesitation shouted back in unison...

"PENN STATE!"

I giggled, thinking the call was a little dorky.  But even then, I felt the magic.  Maybe that's why I never considered attending another university after that day.  

As a Penn Stater, I like to think that this university is a special place, a college that is one step above every other mundane state school.  I know I'm biased... I know that Ohio and Michigan and Alabama all have their traditions and spirit, but we have something that they lack.  Penn State has four words - four words of freakin' amazing rhetoric.

We are Penn State.

Since I moved to Happy Valley last August, I was pretty sure I knew what these four words meant... that is, until tonight when I really tried to explain it.  How do you describe what it means to say "We are Penn State"? It's that feeling of 107,000 fans roaring the chant together.  It's an identity, a sense of knowing that every student, every faculty member, and every alum is a part of something incredible.  It's sharing a unified goal, a dedication to "success with honor", a commitment to working hard, making changes, and having fun doing it.  It's what we scream at Canyon Pizza at 2am on Friday nights.  It's what we shouted at a candlelight vigil in the face of tragedy, declaring that we are still what we believe.  

To me, saying "We are Penn State" is a lot like saying the Pledge of Allegiance.  The 4 words of our chant, the 29 words of the pledge, they're really just words.  But when you believe them and say them together with others who believe them too, these words become something powerful.  They create intense emotions, uniting us and making us believe we can accomplish anything together.  They become us.

This is our rhetoric.  This is what we are.