I am approaching the end of my third year of college. That seems so crazy to me. I remember being 17 and making that long drive for the first time to OCC. I was so worried that I was going to fail all my classes. That seems silly to me now. It seems silly to me because I have learned something about college. College is not about school. At least it isn’t here at Ozark. When I get a 100 on a test, that is not what college is about. It isn’t about making the dean’s list. College isn’t about getting an A in a Mark Moore class or passing my Kenny Boles Greek final. It isn’t about 7 am classes and how many times I can skip it. College isn’t about school. College is about growth. It is about growing our body, mind, spirit.
Body. I was in Issues of Interpretation with Doug Aldridge last year and our topic for the day was on whether or not certain drugs should be legalized and whether or not Christians should use them. We got off onto some tangent that covered a much broader spectrum than just drugs. This was the moment that my view of “growing” our bodies came to be. I personally feel like doing anything that will shorten the lifespan of my time to minister is wrong of me. That can look like not getting high or not smoking or not eating a big mac. As a Christian I can’t be training and growing my heart and mind and ignore my body. I am not going to devote 5 years of my life to get two degrees so that I can possibly love and minister to people but throw it all away in 30 years because I have heart disease. So college students we need to take this time to stop destroying our bodies and start growing them.
Spirit. This one might be the hardest for some of us. I am not generally a “feely” person so it is easy for me to be out of touch with my spiritual side. Until last year I thought growing spiritually meant praying at the crack of dawn, fasting once a month, and having a cliché daily devo. My view of growing spiritually is probably why I didn’t feel spiritual. It is so easy to get lost in either the cliché view or the studious view. I flip flopped between the two for some time. I was either trying to be spiritual or was lost in my school work. But college isn’t about school it is about growing, even growing my spirit. I have had to learn what makes me most feel in touch with God. And I feel pretty lucky because it is studying. What I have to work on is taking my studies and finding the spirituality in it. I think I am not supposed to just complete an assignment but pray over it so that God will reveal himself personally with in my daily studies. Make sure you are not just going to class, church, and serving; find what it is that helps you feel God and do it. Grow your spirit.
Mind. Grow your mind. This one seems like a given but growing your mind does not mean going to school. We can go to class all we want, take test after test, write paper after paper, and not be growing. Are we passionate about we are learning? Or are we apathetic? Do we realize that growing our minds means possibly having the words and the reasoning capabilities to help people in the future? Growing our minds means taking the words of our profs and have them interact in our lives. Take what we are learning out of the classroom and expound upon it and apply it. Growing our minds means learning more than just what is being told to us. Have a real conversation. Ask questions that don’t involve the next assignment. Read a book. And for that matter read a book that isn’t assigned.
Yes sometimes we need to pick up our favorite Twilight or Harry Potter but not all the time. I went a little crazy in cali and picked up 21 new books :) Read something that will deepen your understanding of humanity, God, and the cultures we live in. Growing our minds does not mean growing our transcripts.
I don’t want to spend my next two years at OCC getting a’s, marking 60 more hours off my matriculation form, just so I can graduate with two degrees. I want to spend my next two years of college growing. Because college isn’t about school.
