For months, I have been looking forward to this weekend. No, I daresay nearly a year. I have studied for tests and answered surveys that I might otherwise have never taken. And finally, it arrived.
Bryan College holds two Scholarship Events each year: in the fall and in the spring. I would have attended the Fall Scholarship Event, which happened to land on my birthday in November, but my ACT Score came in at 8 am on the morning after the deadline. And by that time every slot was taken anyway, so I waited until February.
Because I have shared with you the events leading up to February, I will summarize by saying that the Spring Scholarship Event promised to be the perfect break in my normal, everyday routine.
It was Friday, February 23, and I went to class as I did every Friday, Monday, and Wednesday. But today, in addition to the backpack I always carried, I had two other bags with me. I would not be going home until the following day.
I stopped by Mrs. Wesolowski’s Office to leave the two bags, and she mentioned offhandedly the name of the person she thought I would be staying with.
All of the students had the option of staying in the dorms overnight, and some of the college students had volunteered to host a high schooler in their dorm. But no one got to choose their pairings. We were all randomly assigned.
But it just so happened that I already knew the student who ended up hosting me. In fact, I told him that I would be at the event, and it was suggested that we could “waste half the night together.”
God must have liked the idea, because Joseph and I were paired together for the night.
When I walked in at 3 pm for the scheduled check-in session, one of the ladies behind the table asked me what I was there for. Apparently, my time and reputation on campus made it easy to forget—or to simply never know—that I was in high school instead of college. This encounter surprised me considerably, but it would happen again several times over the next twenty-four hours.
The opening session was fun. There was a table full of random prizes and a Wheel of “Fortune”. The lady would ask a trivia question, and whoever answered it would spin the wheel and follow the instructions—things like `dance a jig`, or an ‘age lineup’ of a group of the staff. If the person was lucky, the wheel would land on a free space where they didn’t have to do anything. And then that person could get a prize after doing what the wheel commanded.
I won a prize by knowing that brown was the rarest M&M Color. And I didn’t have to hum a tune or dance a jig because the wheel landed—barely—on a free space.
After that, we went to the dorms. Not only did I get to spend the night with my friend Joseph, but with his roommate as well. I had an air mattress that Joseph laid out next to his bed, and he went out of his way to make everything available to me. He even made an extra pot of coffee for himself because, he said, he was holding me to the offer of wasting half the night with him.
Half an hour later, all of the students went from their dorms to Mercer Hall, where professors from various academic disciplines were meeting with students interested in that field. After this, the entire group of people gathered again for a banquet, during which the Bryan College President, a Bryan College senior, and one of Bryan’s business professors all gave a speech.
To be perfectly honest, I remember very little of what the president said. But I remember that the student gave a very thoughtful and thought-provoking speech about why students would want to come to Bryan College, and this speech opened my mind a bit further than I had been able to on my own in the past.
The final speaker, as I mentioned, was one of the business professors from Bryan. His name was Dr. Jones, and he was in fact my own professor for Principles of Management, the last of four Dual Enrollment courses I took over the four semesters of my final two years of high school. And his speech was along similar lines as that of the one given by the student, but there was more to it at the same time. I don’t know how to describe it, but I will never forget it.
After the banquet, I returned with Joseph to the dorm for about an hour and a half, and we spent that time doing our own individual things, chatting, and becoming, as they say, acquainted. At about 10, we drove down to Wendy’s to pick up more food and then split up for a few hours. Joseph went back to his room, and I went to the sand volleyball court where about 20 people, including two or three of my friends, were playing a game.
I never knew that I could enjoy sports because I’m not very athletic. But I discovered that I was good enough at volleyball to thoroughly enjoy the game and actually be a contributing member of the team I played on. Unfortunately, however, I had to leave after the first two games because another friend of mine had invited me to come up to his dorm with them.
In hindsight, I must not say it was unfortunate. I turned out to be joining a group of about seven students, most of whom I knew, who spent the next hour working on a song that one of them had written. And after that, we simply hung out until, one by one, we drifted back to our dorms.
But when I returned to the dorm, I was not at all ready for sleep. Joseph’s roommate had returned from work, and Joseph pulled out the VR setup. We continued to play with VR and just hang out until about 2 am. Joseph’s roommate went to sleep at once, but Joseph and I stayed up in the dark for hours until he finally went to bed.
I thought that I had slept because I know that I had another nightmare, but I cannot at this moment recall any time when I could actually say I was really asleep.
The next day went extremely quickly. Neither of my roommates woke up, but I got myself up and went down to Mercer hall for the 8 am breakfast, morning devotional, and the one thing we had all been waiting for and, in the same sense, dreading.
The main part of our Scholarship Event experience, the part that told Bryan College about us, was the interview that each person would have with professors in their field of interest. We were all nervous in a way, but I found that when I actually sat down for the interview, I was relaxed, and I had no problem answering the questions they asked me.
After the interviews, it was time to go home. As before during the Summer Institute, I had gained a small following. It was only three people, and only one of them ever spoke to me afterward, but farewells were somewhat solemn just the same. And then, my parents arrived, and I went back to my hometown and the normal routine which, for twenty-four hours, I had escaped.