Falcon Footnotes

This summer several students working in the admissions office put together a video tour of campus. Walk around campus with Nick.

As an incoming first-year student, those above me constantly advised me to avoid 8 a.m. classes. My roommate and I didn’t listen. There we were, in the heart of our first year as college students, pretending we didn’t hear the alarms we had set. His always went off first; it was an awful rap song, filled mostly by static and poor sound quality. Around November he decided to change it, this time to a Will Ferrell quote that still makes me twitch when it is repeated. Mine generally would follow, a more mellow, standard tone. Neither helped. We continued to lay there – his bunk above mine – as the brutal reality of 8 a.m. classes hit us. After a few long moments of silence I would hear “You up bro?” to which I always responded “I’m not exactly sure.” Just as the clock reached the last moment we could safely stand up, shower, pack our bag, and make it to class on time, we would jump out of bed and into our routine. This is what it means to be a college student…

The college climate would be far from complete without tradition. This, I soon found, would be the key to surviving an 18-credit, 10-hour work week. As spontaneous as we were in our first year, trips to local Baker’s diner in Dillsburg became commonplace. Eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night? Class at 8 a.m.? Somehow, Baker’s seemed like an appropriate destination. Their egg and bacon sandwich on a croissant is insurmountable; their appetizer platter constantly kept us up beyond midnight. This is our tradition.

As I anticipated a change that would require me to leave home, live in a new location, and interact with unfamiliar people, my prayer life began to grow dramatically. This seemed to be a natural process; my future was uncertain, and I wanted to rely without fail on God to foster a spirit of peace. What I realized upon arriving on campus, however, was that this period of growth needed to continue even after my uncertainty and anxiety was repressed. I expressed a need for constant prayer more after my transition (which seemed almost flawless) than before. A heart of thanksgiving and gratitude, I learned, is equally as important as a heart in need.