So, Like, I’m in College Now. For Real.

It was just after 7:00 AM yesterday when my alarm went off and NPR woke me up. Morning Edition signaled the start of a new era—that of the college student. My first class that day was in Seney Hall, the large brick building with the clock tower that is my most-used reference point orienting myself on campus. Most people probably don’t want to be doing math—much less calculus—at 8:00 AM when they’ve barely had time for breakfast and a coffee, but I had math first my freshman year of high school, and the day at Walton started at 8:20, so I was used to classes at that time. There was only one problem: I wasn’t exactly in the class, and now, on Day 2, I’m still technically on the waitlist, but my professor and I are both confident a spot will open up soon and I’ll officially join the roster. After a nice microcentury of calculus in which our main focus was to define increasing functions, I had a nice, long break (long enough to comfortably listen to even a long recording of Beethoven 9 to relax) before my 10:00 American History class, that, unlike APUSH, Honors World, or On-Level World in high school, doesn’t cover colonial times to the present. This class only covers until 1877, stopping at the end of the Grant Administration when that year’s famous Compromise was made. In what felt like the blink of an eye, when the clock hit 10:50, I had done it. I had finished my first day of classes as a college student at one of the Southeast’s premiere institutions. At that point, I definitively realized three things.

1.    So, like, I’m in college now. For real.

2.    Hard work will be required, but you will succeed.

3.    The next four years will be amazing!

After that 10:50 end of my first day, I spent the rest of the day exploring the campus, untangling the mess that was my schedule, and trying to process the fact that, yes, I am indeed a college student. The day was long, but I still felt great by the time it was over, more energized and ready to move on to the next day than ever before.

Day 2 was today. Today’s schedule, though it began later than yesterday’s, was longer. The day began with the first day of Fundamentals of Geology, a lab course during which we just went over the usual procedural stuff, but also took a few notes regarding how expansive the field of geology actually is, and why it is critical for our success as a species that we be keen to study and appreciate it. I had a nice long break in between Geology and my next class—long enough for a few laps around the Quad during which I prayed both the Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet and a casual lunch at the Dining Hall.

After lunch, I went to my Discovery Seminar, a new interdisciplinary course taught by your academic advisor now a part of the curriculum here at Emory Oxford. That course, in graph theory, is a great introduction because, even though graph theory can be “really complicated and unwieldy” in the words of a fellow student in class today, our professor is going to, without sacrificing anything technical, give us a great understanding of the fundamentals of the discipline on the assumption that the vast majority of us know next to nothing about it. I picked this class in order to maybe gain the insight to (try to) solve one of the most pressing mathematical questions, and maybe the critical thinking and mathematical reasoning skills gained from the course will be the ones that set off the spark that lead to a conclusive proof on this open problem, one way or another.

But when I left that class, I was really reminded of my four years “way down in The Valley.”  Five, six, or seven minutes almost never felt like enough time to crisscross the campus like I almost always had to do each time the three Ds sounded, letting classes out. I wanted all that to happen before the B and the G announced to the campus there was one minute before classes resumed. Here at Emory Oxford, there are no bells pitched in second inversion G major chords to choreograph the “dance” that is the transition from one class to the next. There is simply organized chaos. And in the midst of nearly a thousand others trying to do the same thing, I have to go down a flight of stairs, zigzag a third of a mile across the campus, and go up one more flight before finally arriving at my next building. And let’s not forget that the professor might run a little over time, or that I might need to stay behind for a minute or two. Even with all of this, I still need to be clear across the campus in fifteen minutes, a task that, even after completing it successfully today, I will still find incredibly daunting the next time I have to repeat it on Wednesday. Oh, and by the way, I missed a critical turn, so the pressure to be on time was even greater. Once I finally arrived, it was time to get my world blown apart—everything I knew about economics was probably wrong, and I would need to make myself vulnerable to change and let the professor rebuild my understanding of the science of how people make choices from the ground up. I’d heard that kind of thing a few times in high school, and I remember those were the classes in which I gained the most knowledge, deepened my understanding the most, so I was really optimistic about this class.

I didn’t get exactly the schedule I wanted, but I think I got the schedule I needed. I don’t know what lies ahead, but I do know that the fact that all of this worked out is due to the providence of the Holy Spirit, and it is through the protection of the same Spirit that this year, though it has only just begun, will be the best academic year I have ever had.