animated marginalia

Consider: first, you have just been ontologically demoted. Half a year ago you were a high school senior. Whether or not you were the quarterback of the football team or homecoming queen, you likely had the respect of the underclassmen and an intimate knowledge of the school's inner-workings and idiosyncracies. But now -- suddenly -- you're a freshman, relegated to the substructure of the chain of being, unable to secure your first choice of professors, assigned to BEST for practical service, and stuffed into the smallest room on the hall. This uncomfortable, cramped position hardly gives you the necessary perspective for wise evaluation.

Further, your first semester is essentially one long, three and a half month first-date. Without a shared history, it is impossible to know or be known. And so, in those hectic first months you are strangely forced to choose what aspect of your character will be the one you let others see. You may play up your looks, your fearlessness, your loudness, your humor, your athleticism, your intelligence, your high school popularity, your apathy, your rebelliousness, your mellowness, or your piety. Even if you say, "I'm just being myself," you choose to craft your reputation on your individualism. It's only now, after sharing a semester together, that can you really begin to unpack and appreciate the personalities of those around you.

Finally, things might not be funny yet. Humor is intrinsically tied to perceiving the incongruous and, during your first semester, you are likely still working to conceive of what constitutes "regular" in this new place. Elaborately costumed and choreographed but still seemingly impromptu rock concerts on chapel lawn may baffle and frighten you now, but in three years -- after a new humorous aesthetic has settled into your psyche -- you will likely chuckle. A semester of college life does a lot of things, but I’m skeptical that it provides you with an adequate foundation for anticipating what will follow.

The alternative, quite simply, is the character of God. Who exactly is this God that you claim? Is it the God who "is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us" (Eph 3:20), the God whose sovereignty is kind and expansive? Why limit your expectations to your own finite and flimsy understanding of reality?

No matter how horrific your current rooming situation, obnoxious your hallmates, unbearable your classes, dismal your grades, barren your love life, or convoluted your sense of self, mercy can overturn and overwhelm all your logical conjectures of what should happen next. Yes, consequences will flow from whatever choices you made or reputation you garnered during those first few months, but grace mitigates and restores, surprises and delights. So come back. Come back asking boldly and walking humbly, living with active patience. See you next semester.

Fantastic! and very well put. I work with Freshman and if I had the power to, I would make them all read this.

Fantastic! and very well put. I work with Freshman and if I had the power to, I would make them all read this.

gosh I loved my time at Covenant. This essay rocked.

well said, as only you could :) Good times. I'm diggin the English dept. Hesselink in ... gold? huh. Food for thought.

well said, as only you could :) Good times. I'm diggin the English dept. Hesselink in ... gold? huh. Food for thought.

speaking as a sophomore who is just now growing out of the freshman-like state of which you speak, all I can say is, "amen." Good word. I am glad that I know you. :)

Also, sad news: Steph is sick with the stomach flu! The nurse just wheeled her into her room in a wheelchair!! Libby and I went to tell her Writing Center appointment that she couldn't make it. Dr. Barker is lookin' good. :)

Well said. It seems to be true for all beginnings.