My sister's car

When my sister, the oldest in our family, left for college, she went without a car. She lived on campus and apparently made friends with enough people who did have cars that she had no problem getting places she needed to go. At some point in her junior year, though, I remember my parents bought a car for her.

It wasn’t a fancy car. It was a used, red Geo Prizm. Four doors. Decent gas mileage. No cruise control. But it did have one pretty snazzy feature on the cassette deck. (I’m sorry, what’s a CD?) It had this “song repeat” button that was so smart it could back up exactly to the beginning of the previous/current song. It was much like the “repeat” function on the forthcoming CD players, but for a tape. So far ahead of its time, right? And so very smart.

Sharing your faith with faculty

College students have always intrigued me! When I was a high school senior, I was dating a college freshman. She took me to her campus group where I met her campus minister, who later became a close friend and influenced me toward campus ministry. During my Masters studies I took every course relating to that field. Later I worked with students as a full-time campus minister at a large state university. Then most of my 40+ years of teaching were with students who were also preparing for student ministry.

I love college students, especially the six who are my grandchildren. They still challenge me in my understanding of their generation, as well as their growth and relationships. While I know I still have a lot to learn about them, I believe they still need to learn a thing or two themselves… and research proves it!

One university’s human growth and development faculty declared that, during the 4 years of college, students make 8 cognitive leaps.

My friend Moses

I was a junior in college when God started working in my life in a whole new way. I had been reading the Bible for years; but something was different now. Suddenly I realized I needed a plan, a roadmap of sorts, for my Bible reading. It turned out to be a great thing in my life.

I perused a variety of devotional and Bible-reading-plan books and decided to start with “The Pentateuch: Chapter by Chapter.” As the name implies, it really was a chapter-by-chapter guide to the first five books of the bible. Some chapters had only a couple paragraphs of commentary or notes about them; others had closer to a whole page. But this little book literally guided me through the beginning of what would wind up being my first time to read the entire Bible, cover to cover.

The most surprising thing happened as I read these five books: I made a friend.

Sign me up!

I was involved in only a handful of activities in college. Mostly they were groups that found me, rather than me finding them. Either I had a friend who invited me to get involved in something, or I stumbled upon it some other way. I didn’t often go looking for student groups to explore or join... but now I realize I should have.

I recently did a search on my university’s website for all their student organizations (753 total). Now I know many of these are new since I graduated, but still, it’s pretty impressive what’s available out there. Of course there are all manner of academic-related groups. It seems every college or major has some kind of student group. There are also loads of social awareness organizations, every flavor of religious student group, a rather long list of Greek chapters to consider and even several dance troupes related to obscure people groups around the globe.

But then there are more off-the-beaten path ones too.

You Find What You Look For

I went to college at a reputed “party school.” I never really saw the party aspect firsthand. I remember driving past frat houses when they were in full party mode. As best as I can remember, from lo those many years ago, my thoughts were a strange mix of envy, pity and curiosity. I remember driving by the morning after parties and the envy quickly disappearing.

Because I was (and still am) terribly boring, I never got closer to these parties than the occasional drive-by. No, wait, it seems like maybe I did shoot a story for our college TV station at a party one time. I can’t remember. I hear that memory loss is symptomatic of those parties, so maybe I was there.