College.
College turned out to be nothing like I expected.
I’m going to take a bit longer today than usual because I’d like to share how different from my expectations my first-year college experience turned out to be.
I expected to do all of my homework in study groups with friends.
I expected to study for hours each week with classmates.
I expected to fill my free time with hobbies and personal projects.
And I expected to have a good friend group by the end of Freshman Year.
But I didn’t.
Homework
I did most of my homework on my own, in the afternoon hours while people were just getting out of class but hadn’t come out for dinner just yet.
Nearly every weekday at Bryan is the same. People start getting up in mass at 8 in the morning, which is when the first classes of the day begin. 8-AMs are the black sheep of classes at Bryan, but their existence is accepted and utilized by the students as a whole.
Most people are up by 10 on chapel days, but every day at 11:30 is when lunch begins filling up. So between 11:30 and 2, between lunch and classes, students are out and about more than any other time in the day. So by 4 pm, everyone is either at sports practice, jobs, or doing homework, so I would generally do the same.
Studying
This past semester, I made A’s in all four of my classes, but I don’t remember a single instance of studying anything except for the New Testament Memory Verse.
Free Time
I had a very significant amount of what you would call “Free Time”, but I never left it free. In fact, here are some of the things that came about as results of my “Free Time”.
This was one of the first things I dreamed up back in the fall. I decided that coffee and donuts would incentivize a few of the freshmen to wake up when registration for the next semester’s classes opened at 6 AM and was surprised by how successful that prediction was.
I would say that over half of the freshman population was there at that event to register for classes.
Carols of Care wasn’t really a new thing, because I had done it successfully the year before as well. However, it did take a considerable amount of coordination because this year, one night was students on campus, but the next was members of a local church.
Basically, we just went Christmas caroling to people on campus and in the community.
As soon as the new semester started, I became much more laboriously involved in the SGA at Bryan College, drafting its new Constitution and then working throughout the rest of the semester to ensure that upcoming elections would run smoothly.
One of the projects that was related somewhat to SGA, although never really tied to it, was the Freshman Dorm Awards. This was a rather low-stress project, because all I really had to do was promote it, and then go with the judges to judge the contestant rooms on the nights when it was held.
But it was fun, and it made people happy, and it took up some of my free time.
And then someone mentioned that it would be nice to have another event. So I decided, within about five minutes, without any forethought, to host a bonfire with hot dogs and s’mores.
Not only did more people show up than I even dreamed of, but people contributed so much in food items, ones, and fives that I left with slightly more money—maybe ten dollars—than I had before the event.
In the middle of all this, I had plans to run for President of SGA for the upcoming year, and one of my friends mentioned that my opponent and I should have a Fight Night. Bouncing off of this, I said something about a debate and then realized that this would be a good idea.
It was no more than a campaign opportunity for both of us, and a turnout of about 20 or 30 students was the most we could hope for on a Wednesday night.
But the 130+ students who showed up to the event seemed to find it very engaging and informative, and nearly all of them stayed right to the end.
While this was still happening, I learned that the Intramural Sports Program at Bryan would not be holding the usual pool tournament, and so I hosted the tournament as well.
And in the midst of all of that, I also very handily won the election for SGA President, and so many people that I do and even don’t know, but who apparently know me, have been very excited about this fact.
The first Bonfire had been a success, and everyone had urged me to host a second one, which I did. This one, however, was during the week before finals, a period so full of studying and last-minute assignments that it has earned for itself the unofficial title of Hell Week. In light of that, I expected a much smaller turnout of maybe ten or fifteen people, but ended up having even more people show up than had gone to the first one, even though I actually announced it much less than the first.
Be careful what you suggest around me. If I’m even remotely bored or idle, it will very likely come to fruition.
Friend Group
I don’t have a friend group, and I’ve often bemoaned this fact. It hurts just a little bit to see groups of people—even people I know—hanging out, going everywhere together, doing everything with each other, and never being seen without the others. And I’d really like to be that guy that everyone wants to hang out with, but it just didn’t work out that way.
Instead, I made friends.
A friend group is a horrible thing in many ways, because everyone in it has the illusion of friendship with each other, but situational convenience is usually the primary thing holding it together. Over the course of this semester, I’ve watched many friend groups form and fracture based entirely on whose momentary schedules, opinions, petty complaints, and romantic relationships are just right at any given time.
But I just stepped out a little, invested time and care into each person I interacted with, and formed a few good friendships with them as individuals rather than members of a group. And I learned a very valuable lesson about people with the most recent friendship that I developed this way, not from that person, but in the faces of others as they found out I knew this person.
If you are tall, if you are even remotely quiet, if you play a sport, and if any hint of a rumor exists about you, you become a social villain. Personally, however, I do my best to go beyond rumors, profiles, and stereotypes, and learn who you are as a person. So when I was blessed by what I consider a very valuable friendship, I was also greeted with a multitude of double-takes and raised eyebrows each time someone who knew me learned that I was spending time with this person. Not because he’s a bad person himself, which he is not by any means, but because people don’t take the time or make the effort to discover the person behind the face, the rumors, and the stereotypes.
And in my opinion, they are missing out on a very remarkable person because they won’t look past what other people say or think.
People have defined my experience this year. As a person who thrives off of the happiness of others, and enjoys nothing more than being able to make them smile even for a moment, I treasure the moments I’ve had with people. And I’ve introduced some of them to you. But this year as a whole, I’ve seen God move mountains and split the seas time and time again. God has used this experience to change my life, and I’ve met some of the most remarkable people anyone could ever hope to encounter. I’ve shared adventure, joy, heartbreak, pain, stress, sadness, and fatigue. And of all the things I’ve learned in college, I can say without a doubt that only a fraction of them were taught in the classrooms.
So indeed it is true.
College was nothing like I expected.
But it was better than anything I could have hoped for.