My first taste of adulthood was getting my driver’s license. Growing up, I longed for the days when I would be behind the wheel, windows rolled down, music blaring, holding the power to go wherever I wanted. I had visions of a big-city apartment, walking to the grocery store, sitting down with my friends at the best restaurants, and eating the best foods.
I longed to be a “grown-up.” For many, college is the gateway to adulthood. It serves as the launching point into independence and offers the opportunity to write your own story.
I applied to schools that fit my grown-up agenda. I wanted to attend a college with a low acceptance rate and bask in the prestige that came with it. I wanted social scenes that would have the right vibes and lead me to the people who could advance my career aspirations.
When I received the admittance letter to my number one pick, I cried. They wanted me just as much as I wanted them. This was my shot.
Freshmen settling into dorms might find themselves in the same situation. Everything seems new, exciting, and unknown. It’s syllabus week, and your classes sound more interesting than you could have dared imagine. Campus is overwhelming, but exciting.
But with the excitement also comes anxiety. The unknowns can feel as scary as they do intriguing. There are too many names and faces to remember, and you are already longing for your friends from home.
New beginnings require a kind of death. You have to part ways with your old life as you seek to establish a new one.
Wherever you find yourself, remember this: God is always at work in unlikely places.
I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed heading into my new beginning in the fall of 2014. I met my roommate for the very first time on move-in day. We shook hands in the morning and then slept in the same room, 10 feet from each other, that night. My dorm was decorated with some familiar favorites from my childhood bedroom and some new digs from Marshalls, though my new setup lacked the familiarity of home.
The dining hall food started to get old by the second week. I sat in classes with strangers, walked on campus with strangers, and felt much like a stranger myself. The intrigue I had for adulthood was being suffocated by my reality. Starting something new is hard.
Over the course of my freshman year, I realized more and more that change involves loss, no matter how good that change is. I grieved my loss of proximity to friends back home, the ease of high school academics, and the accountability of living with my family. With my independence came an exponential increase in responsibility, my loneliness increasingly exacerbated by memories of family friends saying things like, “The college years are the best years of your life!”
Was there something wrong with me? Everything being new was supposed to feel like freedom, but now it felt alien. I was looking around at my classmates and asking, “Are we all feeling this way?” Through my years in college and working in campus ministry, I’ve discovered that the answer is yes, we are.
I spent much of my freshman year weighed down by loneliness and grief, but at a certain point, desperation led me through the doors of a small ministry I had noticed at the student organization fair. It was called Reformed University Fellowship. I was not a Christian, but I was hungry for friendship and answers to all the questions that were swimming around in my head.
Remember what we said earlier about where God works?
A dorm room with an Urban Outfitters tapestry on the wall or a crowded college organization fair may seem like unlikely places to find God doing his best work, but then again, so does a feed trough in Bethlehem. Throughout Scripture, we see that God loves to use unlikely means to accomplish his purposes.
Going away to college may just be your unlikely means. In the midst of the sensory overload, the unmet expectations, the loneliness, even the blinding fun, remember that God does not forsake the work of his hands, including you.
This new beginning may be the start of tasting that good news for yourself. Even in the strangest places, you are loved, known, and seen by the God who made you. Starting afresh, and all the discomfort that it brings, may be what the Lord is calling you into to bring you nearer to him. You may feel a profound sense of loss and loneliness during this transition, but that is okay. God is there and at work in such moments.
Being able to drive a car is still a solace for me, but now I know my heart was looking for freedom in all the wrong places. True freedom comes from knowing Christ. Windows down and music blaring are no longer the end goals, but rather a glimpse of the joy found in Jesus, who frees us from bondage to sin and ourselves.
We apply to college with the hope of being accepted. And then we attend college with the hope of finding people who accept us. Along the way are questions and anxiety. My life was changed when RUF introduced me to the God who accepts me, even though he knows the darkest things about me. Even better, RUF introduced me to the ministry of the church, a community where God grows us in his grace.
My advice is simple. As you start college, take your questions and anxiety to the Lord. Connect with others through campus ministry and the local church who can encourage and equip you along the way.
College was the beginning of eternity for me, an invitation into a lifetime of starting over and new morning mercies. I pray it is for you, too!
Morgan Kendrick serves as campus staff with Reformed University Fellowship at Vanderbilt University.