As new college students, we were required to come a week early to settle in before the other students returned. Part of our settling took place with our roommate. In those quaint days, we may have talked to a roommate before moving in, but there was no Zoom or Facetime, no discussion about who was bringing what to enhance the room, what colors we preferred. We were simply thrown into the deep end and expected to make the best of it.
I did well in the roomie department, courtesy of someone sitting in an office and matching people. My roommate was also a pre-seminary Bible major, with the same last name, and a similar complex family dynamic. She lived within an hour’s drive, and had a job, so was permitted the luxury of having a car, which was verboten for nearly all first-year students. Orientation put us in small groups to discuss the four books we’d been sent to read over the summer. I was astonished to learn that some of my fellow students hadn’t bothered to read all or sometimes any of them. I found Escape From Reason by Francis Schaeffer a slog, yes, and I remember almost nothing about it. Being in the discussion group taught me one important lesson: autonomous was not pronounced as I’d been saying it in my head while reading Schaeffer. I think one of the other books was Tim LaHaye’s on understanding the four temperaments, no doubt to try to help us make sense of our classmates. Much of the week was spent standing in lines. Registration was done by hand, of course, and we were to meet first with our academic advisors to make a plan. My advisor didn’t know quite what to do with me. “Are you sure you’re not a Christian Education major?” he asked. I was positive about my choice. I wanted to take Greek; pre-sem majors had fewer general requirements in Bible to make room for two or three years of Greek. I signed up for several classes, all with Introduction or Foundations in their names. After registering, the bookstore, located in a small section of a building, gave us another opportunity to stand in line. Three times a day there were lines for meals and the agony of finding someone with whom to sit, or sitting alone, trying to be invisible. My shyness was no help during those first weeks. Well, honestly, it’s never been much help.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
Categories |