The shootings had finally stopped, and senior Matt Schloesser tried to reach three or four of his Virginia Tech classmates by phone.

First, he couldn’t get through.

Then all he got was voice-mails, the casual voices of a normal day.

This was a different day.

So Schloesser, 23, of South Kingstown, got in his car and drove. He drove to one apartment, then a second, then another, just to know if his friends were alive.

“To make sure,” he said.

Three hours earlier yesterday, Schloesser, an engineering major, woke up in his apartment about a quarter-mile from the Norris building, where most of the killings occured.

At 9:30 a.m., school alarms sounded, but by then Schloesser had heard a room-mate talking about a shooting on campus.

Schloesser and his friends gathered in his apartment around his computer, which was linked to a Web site broadcasting emergency calls.

Eventually, Schloesser said he heard that the shooter had been apprehended. Then he called his parents in South Kingstown, leaving messages saying he was all right.

“I got calls from people I had not talked to in 10 years making sure I was fine,” Schloesser said. “Some people I had not seen since middle school, some people I had not seen since high school.”

Schloesser spoke by cell phone today as he and friends waited for convocation to start in Cassel Coliseum.

“Right now, I am past our basketball stadium and there is a line as far as I can see of people coming into the convocation,” he said.

“It’s been unlike anything I have ever dealt with,” Schloesser said of the tragedy. “The one thing that is nice is seeing how many people are coming out and supporting us.”

In about a month, Schloesser is due to begin Army service at Fort Lewis in Washington State.

Within a year, he expects to be serving in Iraq.