1.5 Sunday at the Beginning

9. It was a Christian college, so there was a worship service for all the new students Sunday morning. That afternoon there would be a church fair where most of the churches in the area would set up tables on the quad if it didn't rain. A few even had special gatherings that evening for anyone who was interested in learning more.

The worship was a fun service. It was mostly contemporary Christian music, although they did start with the campus hymn--Great is Thy Faithfulness. The worship band was pretty good. Lucy noticed that there was a good mix of people in the band--guys, gals, white, black, Hispanic, Asian.

The Dean of the Chapel preached. She was good. Her text was Joshua 1:9--"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. The LORD your God is with you wherever you go." As far as Mac could tell, she was not reading from a paper. He hated it when the preacher read from a manuscript. Those sermons were usually more boring.

But Lucy could tell she wasn't simply making up what she was saying on the fly. She could tell she had worked on the sermon long enough that she could speak conversationally. She had notes but she never looked at them but was able to walk across the stage from one side to the other without missing a word.

10. Highlander University was broadly Methodist. With the Scottish connections, Presbyterian might have made more sense but its founder was a Scotsman whose parents had come under the spell of a horse riding Methodist named Francis Asbury in the early 1800s. Elijah Shepherd was in his fifties when he decided to pass on a portion of his wealth to found the college in 1867.

He had made his money on the canal, especially on logging. Although he had been an abolitionist in principle, he felt guilty for not doing more before the Civil War. He made sure that African-Americans were welcome at the college from the very beginning. In fact, two of the ministers in the very first class were former slaves who had escaped to the north through the Underground Railroad.

At the beginning, it had been Highlander Seminary, focused on training Methodist ministers. But the first president of the college convinced Elijah that the school needed to provide a broad education to both men and women. And women were a part of the school from its earliest days, some of whom had been present at Seneca Falls when the woman's movement began. Others had been there when Luther Lee preached the ordination service of the first woman to be ordained in the States.

So the church most associated with the church was Methodist, and more students and faculty attended there than any other church. Lucy and Mac had more or less assumed that was where they would go. There were regular chapels at eleven in the morning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But they were not meant to substitute for regular going to church.

1.4 Class Preview Day

6. The evening brought res hall parties. Lucy and Mac forgot that they were even on the same campus together. Neither of them were much into such social events, but they found themselves having fun nonetheless. There were plenty of snacks and games. Lucy spotted one or two possible friends, and Mac just blended in without thinking much about it. They quickly realized that their own roommates probably wouldn't end up their best friends.

The morning brought the first day of class... sorta. The university had decided to start classes on the Friday before Labor Day, just to dip the students' toes in the water of college. There would be more orientation on Saturday and they would have Monday off. So Friday they walked through their classes.

7. When Lucy had made her deposit--$200--she had declared Environmental Science as her major. One of the distinctives of Highlander University was an "integrated science curriculum." All science majors took either a biology-chemistry combination or a physics-calculus combination their first year. Then they took the other the second year. And the chemistry and physics courses were designed to connect to each other.

So after answering a few questions, an admissions counselor set up a schedule for her. She would start with eight credit hours of the biology-chemistry combination. Then she had the "Themes of the Bible course." Finally she took three hours of Spanish 3 to finish out a language requirement, since she had Spanish in high school. It was a total of 15 hours, a respectable first semester load.

Mac wasn't exactly sure what to major in. Criminal Justice sounded interesting, although he wasn't entirely sure what it was about. It sounded like something a policeman might study. So the admissions counselor signed him up for Intro to Sociology, Spanish 3, philosophy, and, on a whim, ROTC. It was a 13 hour load, a light load for a chill guy to slide into college.

8. The administration insisted that the first day of class be fairly light. There were always professors that wanted to crack a whip to shock the new students into college, but they had been squelched. The day was meant to be more like a preview day. In fact, it was scheduled so that a student could get a taste of almost every class they had, even if it didn't meet on Friday.

On Saturday their FYE groups met to discuss how the first day had gone and to look at their syllabi--the blueprints for each class. There was pizza for lunch and then the first home football game of the year on Saturday afternoon. That was fun, especially since they won. Then Saturday night was yet another res hall social to keep growing the new relationships.

1.3 NSO continues

4. At one o'clock, parents and young people separated for the first time. The students met their group leaders, grabbed ice cream, and then headed off to the classroom where their First Year Experience (FYE) class would meet that semester. It was quite a clever set up. One of their freshmen classes was designated a first year experience class, but it was much more than a class. It had attached to it a one hour class called "First Year Experience" that helped them adjust to college and involved a lot of pizza.

So Lucy's FYE class was connected to a required course called "Central Themes of the Bible." Mac's attached class was "Intro to Sociology." They were smaller sized classes of about 15 that made it possible for them to get to know a professor really well. Only the best and most helpful professors were chosen to teach those classes.

Then for the one hour FYE part, some activity was always planned involving either the professor or their group leader. One week they would go over to the professor's house for supper. Another week they went to see a movie. Around mid-term, they had a pizza party. Meanwhile, both the professor and the group leader met at least once one-on-one with every student to have coffee at the campus coffee shop, "The Grounds."

5. Meanwhile, the parents went to the recital hall to hear the president. She gave them a little flavor of the college, touting its three historic emphases of virtue, scholarship, and service. She especially encouraged them to let their children go, to let them become responsible for the next phase of their lives. She strongly suggested that they resist the urge to visit their children (or vice versa) for at least the next month.

Then at 2:30 was a Consecration Service, where the parents symbolically handed over their children to the Lord. The president spoke again. At one point she invoked Ron Weasley from Harry Potter, "So you're going to suffer, but you're going to be happy about it." She emphasized that for the next three or four years they were going to be challenged intellectually, spiritually, and probably relationally and even physically (the hills on the campus were notorious). But she assured them they would be better prepared for life and whatever job they ended with than at the vast majority of colleges.

At the end of the service the new students marched out of the chapel following a man in a Scottish kilt playing bagpipes. They marched around the "quad," as it was called, and then returned to the chapel for their first class photo. More ice cream and refreshments with their parents, and their parents were off.

1.2 New Student Orientation

2. So one Wednesday in late August, they and their parents got in a car in south Florida and started driving north. A day and a smidge later, they pulled onto the campus, turning up a steady incline, over a river and up into its beautiful stone campus. Most of the buildings donned stone from the nearby riverbed, a remnant of a previous era of scarcity.

During the first world war there had been a shortage of brick. But someone had the idea of using stone from the river to build what would become the central building. It turned out so well that all future buildings were made with the stone.

The college itself was founded in 1867 just after the Civil War, when the Erie Canal was still going strong. There were visions of tributary canals reaching out over the state and the emergence of trading towns bustling with prosperity. Unfortunately for these dreamers, the railroad soon dashed all their hopes, leaving the small hamlet of Culloden isolated in the beautiful hills of western New York.

In the mid-twentieth century it had grown to the size of 1200, and had largely stayed the same until the great recession, which led it to think deep and hard about its identity. It was long known for its demanding academics and Christian faith and had no interest in becoming a large university. But when it dipped to 1000, its board and leaders went into creative mode. Within five years they were back to their desired spot and now have to turn students away each year.

3. They turned into campus to find a group of enthusiastic students cheering and jumping at the sight of their car. A quick stop amid the students and they were directed across the river to their respective residence halls. Lucy was in Deborah Hall, named after the woman who led Israel into battle in Judges 4. Mac was in Maxwell Hall, named after the great Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Following an old tradition, men and women lived in different halls, although they were allowed to visit each other's rooms until midnight.

They were early enough to get into their dorms and dawdle a little at the Information Fair before lunch. Lucy and Mac perused a variety of clubs, churches, banks, and volunteer opportunities nearby. The cafeteria had been an important part of Lucy's visit day back in the spring. She had followed the normal process of admission, including a trip to campus. She had liked the cafeteria--you could steer clear of the starch if you wanted, some good veggie options, pizza and ice cream as needed.

Mac had not come for the visit. He had used a track meet as an excuse. His parents had pushed him to apply just in case, although he really had no intention at the time. He was as surprised to be there as anyone...

4. At one o'clock parents and young people separated for the first time...

1.1 Off to College

1. Lucy had always wanted to go to college. She had not particularly enjoyed her middle school or high school experiences. She had been dreaming of college for six years. Finally the day had arrived. She packed up everything she thought she would need and couldn't wait to start the journey.

Mac's story was quite different. He had not been sure if he even wanted to go to college. It was his trip to Spain in the summer that had convinced him. There was so much more to the world than he had ever imagined. He had learned so much Spanish is such a short period of time. Somewhere inside a switch had flipped. He had tasted the forbidden fruit of knowledge and he wanted more.

Lucy wanted to go to Uncle Lee's alma mater, Highlander University. It was situated somewhat remotely in the Allegheny mountains of New York. But what it lacked of the big city it made up for in rivers and woods. It was also an elite school that prided itself on a certain intellectual fearlessness that she found very attractive.

Mac was less convinced. The town had its own share of local restaurants and shops, but he wasn't sure he could live ten miles away from a Burger King or Wendy's. And his parents had always joked about the winters there. For several months they had quoted the line to Lucy from Game of Thrones, "Winter is coming."

To be honest, he settled on Highlander University mainly because Lucy was going there. His dad also showed him a movie from 1986 called Highlander that involved near immortals cutting off each others heads. That sold him... well, that and the fact that Uncle Lee was willing to pay their tuition if they went there.

2. So one Wednesday in late August they and their parents got in a car in south Florida and started driving north...