Spring break is a tease.  You get an entire week  (sometimes more) off, and then you get thrown back into the craziest last half of a semester that there is.  It’s full of papers and projects and exams and professors trying to get everything in before the last day of classes.  And then you have final exams.  Lovely fun.  And in the midst of all of this you’re supposed to be juggling work (three jobs for me) and homework, research and presentations at conferences, for seniors – grad school and graduation plans, the list just goes on and on.

So what does this teach you, what is the point of going through this fun time?  To build character, to learn more about not only the subject you’re studying, but about yourself as well, to learn to balance all the things life throws at you, to grow.  There’s probably so much more I’m missing, but I think those are the things that stick out to me that I’ve learned in college.  It builds character – it’s important to realize that you have the right to make your own decisions, but the consequences of those decisions fall right back on you.  If you stay up until three in the morning gabbing with your friends and have an eight am class, you’re going to be tired.  And you’re going to have to deal with that.  College is a time of learning, yes, about your chosen discipline, but it is also about learning more about yourself.  In my first semester of college, I learned that if I didn’t take care of myself, I was going to end up sick.  I learned that even though I didn’t like some of the people on my floor, I still had to learn to live with them.  I learned that I needed to remove myself from the textbooks that I so often took refuge in and get out of my room.  I learned that people care.  A lot.  When I was in the hospital my freshman year, I was hospitalized 13 hours from home, and so had no immediate family around.  My dad drove up to help check me in but then he had to go back home to go to work.  There didn’t pass a day when I was there that someone from Gordon didn’t come visit me.  Often, I had two, three, even seven people in  my room, and I was blown away by the love that they showed me, just by coming to visit me.  I learned that I need people.  In college you learn (or should learn) balance.  I had to learn to balance time studying with time spent hanging out with friends.  I had to learn to balance swim practice with class schedules and homework.  I had to learn to balance three jobs on top of all of that.  It’s still a learning process, and I’ll never be perfect at it, but it’s something you learn when it’s all thrown at you at once.  College is, finally, a time of growing.  Growing in intellectual knowledge, growing in the knowledge of yourself, growing spiritually, growing.  I’ve grown so much over my time at Gordon College, in every way.  Sometimes that growing isn’t easy.  Sometimes it is.  But it is necessary.  I wouldn’t be the same person today if I hadn’t grown during college.

Now, I”m a junior.  So I’ve still got another year of this craziness.  And being a double major in chemistry and biology, my life is pretty busy.  I’ve been so blessed to learn and grow throughout the last few years I’ve had at Gordon, and I know that God will continue to do great things there.

May the grace and peace of our Lord be with you always.