First Semester Adjustments 2

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4. I started college as an idealist. I had always been a goal-setter. Growing up I often made schedules for myself for my days. I might plan out a summer. I always had a daily planner, like my father. He always had a pen and a "pocket secretary" on hand. [1]

However, unlike my dad, my goals were often unrealistic. I often felt like a failure. I was good with setting goals, not as good with reaching them. Over time, I have learned that "something is better than nothing" and "the perfect is the enemy of the good." "A page a day and you'll be done before you know it." Set realistic goals and, if you don't reach them today, hit reset and keep moving from there tomorrow.

I did not form my current organizational habits until I was dean of Wesley Seminary. These days I always have a pen in my right pocket and a small Moleskin notebook in my left. Before, my dad used to puzzle: "I don't understand how a guy as smart as you never has a pen on him." These days I almost always do.

Of course now we hardly need paper and pen. We have electronic notebooks on our phones. We have iPads. Still, after taking so long to get organized, I refuse to stop carrying them now.

5. I was still idealistic when I started college. I wanted to be perfect at everything. I signed up for Mrs. Bross' 7:50am art appreciation class. I had a horrible time getting up. I did get up. I didn't skip classes. I just had a horrible time staying awake.

Getting up early always sounded like such a good plan the night before. But I think I only made it to breakfast a handful of times. The few times I did I went back to sleep afterwards. I was not a morning person at all in those days. It would take children and a Labrador Retriever to make me into a morning person. Now I love my quiet mornings before everyone gets up. I'm having one right now with coffee at my side.

I didn't drink coffee in those days. I bet it would have really helped me focus and get up. I wanted to drink coffee because my dad drank coffee like a sailor... er, like an infantryman. I remember the first time I went to the Wesleyan men's zone meeting on a Saturday morning with my dad. It was on the beach at what used to be Lloyd State park. I tried coffee. It tasted horrible.

I wouldn't learn to drink coffee until I lived in England, where they put pure cream in it. Now I drink coffee like an infantryman too.

So let's just say I always disagreed with a bit of advising a colleague always gave to new students. He always tried to get new freshman to sign up for a 7:50 class. But there's no point in setting yourself up for failure. People should do what works for them so that they can succeed. Diogenes the Cynic wasn't completely wrong when he argued that a whole lot of human rules are really just made up.

The form of things, the appearance of things, the norms of culture are not insignificant because people don't treat them as insignificant. "Perception is a reality." All the financials can be sound, but if the market perceives a problem, there's a problem.

So I pay attention to form because people do. Society thinks more highly of an early riser than someone who sleeps in. Society thinks more highly of someone with nice clothes than someone who looks scruffy. These things aren't important at all on substance. They matter because of perception.

In my heart of hearts, I hate the need to focus on form. But it is a real need because of people. In my heart of hearts, though, I only care about substance. I'd rather read a paper with brilliant thoughts and lots of spelling errors than a perfect piece of grammar with not an interesting thought to be found.

We had to listen to music in the library for Mrs. Bross' class. It was here that I realized the disconnect between my musical ability and my "naming" ability. I could repeat a piece of music by voice in intricate detail, almost like I had a "phonographic" memory of sorts (although not perfect pitch). But I often had difficulty telling you the name of the author or the name of the piece.

I had trouble with random memory. I needed to connect the name with something in the music. To this day, my wife Angela is eternally frustrated with my inability to identify whether a 70s song is from Little River Band, the Eagles, America, or the Doobie Brothers. I can hum every intricacy of the songs musically. I just mess up the words and can't quite get the name of the group right.

At one point in the class Dr. Bross put a quote up: "Man is most like God when he creates." The quote stuck with me. It would later help me formulate an understanding of free will. There is no accounting for true free will in the flow of cause and effect. Free will, as it were, is the possibility of creating a decision ex nihilo, as it were. Free will, assuming it truly exists, is a creative act like God's creative action.

6. I also took Herb Dongell for Old Testament Survey as a freshman. I hate to say that I tended to procrastinate in college. I did my fair share of all-nighters. Every time at 4am I would kick myself saying, "Why did I do this to myself?! Never again!"

The psychology of my procrastination was the dread of the mental energy it would take to start. "A journey begun is a journey half done." Often after beginning I would say to myself, "This is so easy. I could have done this a long time ago." But there is the dread of beginning.

Beginning requires a creative act. It requires a threshold energy. It requires creatio ex nihilo.

Part of our grade in OT Survey was checking off that we had read the whole Old Testament that fall. I had already read the Old Testament, but I didn't space out my reading well that fall. I found myself scrambling to get through as much as I could at the last minute.

I would have Dongell for a number of classes after I changed to a ministry major. What's interesting is that Keith Drury also had Dr. Dongell as a teacher at United Wesleyan. He was an old fashioned holiness guy, although not without common sense. When I started dating, I once asked him what he thought about girls wearing slacks instead of dresses. He commented that male and female clothing in biblical time was pretty much the same. It was an unexpected and sensible answer.

I crammed and tested out of New Testament Survey the summer after my first year. It was interesting to realize how much of the preaching of my childhood must have been from the Old Testament rather than the New. I knew most of the stories from the OT. I didn't know as much about the life of Jesus! That fits with my later assessment that the holiness movement of my background was more law than grace.

I grew up with a certain hermeneutical flatness that didn't process the legislation of the Old Testament through the lens of the new covenant in the New Testament. It also had a penchant for non-literal interpretation of Old Testament stories. It was a gold mine of hermeneutical insight once I began to read the Bible reflectively in seminary.

7. My first year roomate was a Wesleyan pastor's son from North Carolina. As is often the case with first year roommates, we were cordial but not close. He did his thing and I did mine. I was usually asleep by the time he would come to the room.

It's usually in your second year that you begin to room with people who are your actual friends. Even that can be a problem. Proximity isn't always good for some friendships. Some of us can pretty much get along with anyone. Others of us need to be taken in doses.

I roomed with Scott Sylvester my second year and Henry Cavanaugh my third. They were both friends and roomates by choice. Scott introduced me to the dot matrix printer. He actually knew how to use his computer for something more than silly tricks in BASIC.

Henry was a southerner's southerner from eastern North Carolina. It was not uncommon to find him playing ping pong barefoot in the student center. His work study was trash pick up and I have fond memories of his language after missing the trash truck, throwing bags out of the third floor of Childs Hall.

In the summers I roomed with chemistry buddies Micah Travis and Rodney Clark. We found trailers and little holes in the wall off campus. In terms of pranks, I just wanted everyone to be happy. Micah just wanted to get even. Rodney wanted to get ahead.

The best prank I remember from college was when Rodney was ticked at someone whose room was right below his in Childs Hall, maybe Allen Payne. As a chemistry major with keys to the stockroom, there were certain possibilities not afforded to the rest of the campus. Childs also was a pretty old school dorm. You could see the light from the room below around the heating pipes.

So Rodney took some drops of pyradine and let them roll down the pipe from his room into the one below. Pyradine smells a little like vomit. Unfortunately for him, Micah was the RA of the second floor and, being a rather clever fellow, soon figured out what Rodney had done. I forget what Rodney had to do as a punishment.

Thinking of my dating life, I think, Micah once remarked of me in those days that, "Ken, sometimes you look. Sometimes you leap. But you never do them at the same time."

[1] Although I still have questions about Brett Kavanaugh, I completely believe that someone might have their day-planners from high school. In my recent move to Houghton, I found several of mine.