Open Letter to a College Freshman

Congratulations on beginning your first year of college! You’ve worked so hard to get to this point, and you have so much to look forward to. The next few years will be full of fun, learning, friendship, hard work, and exploration. I’m excited to see how you continue to become who God created you to be!

I was thinking about what I wish for you in college, and realized there were some things I wish I had known before I started college. I hope these help make your four years even better:

Roommate Smorgasbord!!!

(All the names of the characters in this story have been changed to protect the innocent.  Actually no one is innocent, which is even more of a reason for protection.)

Growing up I always had a roommate… my brother. We were a family of two boys and a girl so guess who was the only one that got her own room… always. Well not always, because my senior year in high school I finally got my own room. It was divine. My brother went away to college and it was all mine. Life was good!!! When I started planning on going away to college I found out that I had to have a roommate.

A Parent’s (and Grandparent’s) Prayer

Forty-four years ago this month, I was standing on the sidewalk in front of Ruth Collins women’s dormitory at Baylor University, waving good-bye to my dad. Both of us had tears in our eyes. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I had just turned 18 and as I watched his car disappear around the corner, I was certain I had made a terrible mistake leaving home to go to college. Wasn’t TCU so close to my parents’ home that I could have walked there? Why, why, why did I feel like I needed to be “on my own?” Why did I think I needed to go to Baylor, when it meant borrowing so much money that it would take me ten years to pay back all my loans after graduating?