The Positive Conundrum

So I’ve been digesting something.

Not literally. I mean, I’ve been digesting my supper for the last two hours or so. But that’s not the point.

I’ve been mentally digesting something.

I was accepted at Campbell University, a wonderful Christian school in Buies Creek near Wilson, along with a generous scholarship. It would be an honor to attend CU; two of my favorite teachers went there. I have been considering our community college, the College of the Albemarle. The Manteo campus is two minutes away from our house as opposed to the three hours that Buies Creek is.

Before getting into the full swing of this entry, here’s a bit of background. The mascot of Campbell is a camel and the Albemarle is a sound (a broad channel between an island and the mainland) near Roanoke Island. This knowledge will be important in moment.

I considered the pros and cons of each school for a quite a while, even before being accepted at Campbell. All the while, I was leaning towards COA.

A few weeks ago, I prayed that God would show me a sign concerning His will for my college path. I had been reading in 1 Chronicles 12 at the time.

I was specific in my prayer, saying, “If it’s Your will for me to start out at COA, let there be a mention of a body of water in a chapter of the Bible that I read sometime soon. If it’s Your will for me to start out at Campbell, let there be a mention of a camel instead.”

I started reading. Things were as usual. Then verse 15 came along, with the mention of Jordan River: a body of water. My jaw just about dropped and a huge smile came over my face. I continued reading, of course, but was thinking about my prayer, as well.

…And then came verse 40, with the mention of camels. My jaw dropped again, quite a bit further this time.

Now, I’m not big into just opening the Bible to a random page, pointing at a random verse, and expecting it to make a life decision for me or something. But I also don’t really believe in coincidences. The fact that this was the very next chapter in my Bible reading and the fact that I had just prayed for a sign makes me think: the Jordan River mention came before the camel mention. I took that as confirmation from God and as a sign to go to COA and then transfer directly to Campbell due to the order of the two words in that specific chapter. As in: COA first, Campbell second.

I think it’s interesting that the fact that I originally read this in The Message translation doesn’t change anything across other translations: they’re the words “Jordan River” and “camel” and you can’t translate those concepts much differently.

God knows my love for words. He gave it to me, after all. So the fact that He used the printed Word to speak to me makes sense.

The reason for the “huge smile” that came over my face when I saw “Jordan River” was partially due to being reminded of my prayer and partially due to the fact that I had been feeling all along that COA was my next step. Like I said, Campbell is a great school, but it’s bigger than my brother’s alma mater, Southeastern University, and whenever I visited that campus to see him, I would feel pretty overwhelmed. Sure, it’s no NC State, which has nearly 35,000 students, but it’s not a size I feel naturally or immediately at home in, either.

Now, granted, there are few high school students who go off to college who honestly feel completely comfortable with their new surroundings. No one has it all together when they leave home. I also realize that I could certainly get used to a university that large to the extent that it feels as small and community-like as Manteo. When I was being shown around my high school for the first time as a freshman, I felt like an ant backpacking across the Great Wall of China. Now, as a senior, I know the school like I know my own closet; sure, I might not know where everything is at any given time right off the top of my head, but I am very familiar with it and could easily give you directions (in my school, that is; my closet isn’t big enough to fit the second half of that analogy).

But when I would try to imagine myself living and studying in crowd of over 5,000 strangers so freshly out of my high school of roughly 450 students and my town of roughly 1,350 people, I did not feel at all comfortable. Hence the aforementioned smile. “Relief” is a good word to describe what I felt in that moment.

This doesn’t mean that I’ll always feel overwhelmed at the thought of a college campus that requires a carefully planned out aerobic exercise routine (or a car… or a bus ride…) to make my way from class to class in a timely manner. I know my strengths and I know my limits for my present self. I also know that I have plenty of room to grow. I may or may not be within shouting distance of my parents for the rest of my life, but for now, I will enjoy my time with them and my beautiful little town.

COA will help me get accustomed to college life gradually: I’ll have the educational rigor of college without having to make it on my own at the same time. Not only will have I have my parents and church supporting me, but I’ll also have the smaller class sizes. I work the best in situations with lower stimulus, so I’ll be getting in more towards the shallow, rather than the deep, end of the pool.

Another benefit is of course the financial side. The two years I spend earning my associate’s degree at COA are nearly a tenth of the cost of what my first two years of earning my bachelor’s would be at Campbell. I could very easily begin work on my major at Campbell debt free after having the exact same core classes for a fraction of the cost.

By now, I feel like I’m listing reasons to justify myself. These are simply all of the aspects I’ve been mulling over for a while now. I tend to (and often quite enjoy) analyzing things like this!

Thank you for following me through my ramblings. The past few months have been a bit of a conundrum, but in a good way.

Fun fact: Orange is my favorite color. Both Campbell and COA’s colors include orange. I didn’t even realize this until recently.