Biola University First Year Student Journals

A New Home

September 1, 2005 | 25 comments

I reach down, crooked and unbalanced, trying to pick up my last duffle bag from the parking lot ground. I sling it over my shoulder, its strap cutting deeper into my neck, along with ten other backpacks and bags I am wearing across my body. Over-laden and clumsy, I waddle my way to the concrete steps of a new world, a new future, and a new home for the next four years of my life. After surmounting the last step, I walk up to a long two-story dorm and its decorated "Sign-In" table, where I'm greeted with the smiles of two beautiful college girls. They ask me my name and my floor, scribble something on a piece of paper, hand it to the tall and shaggy young man inside the dorm, and tell me to walk inside. I squeeze through the door and find myself surrounded by many other first year college students, also loaded down with clothes and dorm supplies. Two tall, old, and buff guys call out "Now... everyone welcome Tanner Gish to STEWART!" A choir of new and old Biola students yell "Welcome!" and burst out in applause. Here I am. Twelve academic years, hours of paper work, and 435 miles from my hometown, I have finally become a college student.

After a full day of unpacking and arranging more clutter than a three-person dorm can handle, my roommates and I slap on the basketball shorts and take off for the gym. After some sweat and a pretty pathetic NBA imitation, we share our testimonies with each other. It's then that I begin forging what I consider to be the most powerful and critical component of life as I will come to know it at Biola: relationships. While hearing my roommate Bryan sharing his salvation story, I experience a jolt of excitement in my gut. Here around me are thousands of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Being raised in a public school back home, I had learned to seek out and cherish whatever friendships I could with true believers. Now at Biola, this opportunity surrounds me everyday. Personally, it was a hunger for spiritual relationships and spiritual challenges that drew me to Biola as I shuffled through college acceptance paper work last spring. And now, with my first day done, I had already begun meeting like-minded people. As I settled to sleep that night, I knew that this new HöM (the name of my dorm floor) was indeed where God wanted me to be.

For incoming Biola students who are apprehensive about adapting to a new environment: leave it to Biola to get you involved. That was the purpose of the whole first week at Biola: SOS (don't worry, this stands for Student Orientation Service, not Save Our Souls). For the first week, experienced Biola students take you around campus, "show you the ropes" and plan group activities. Their goal is to emerge you into the Biola culture: teach you the rules, show you the tricks, share the campus jokes, and allow you to spark relationships with more first time students and upperclassmen. Although after a few days it became a hassle to catch every single SOS event, it was a blessing to have gained the know-how, the comfort, and the experience of meeting so many people scattered from all over campus and all over the globe.

Completing the introduction to my new life was... class! I have always been a student who enjoyed school (minus the homework). But being the captive audience of professors here at Biola has been nothing short of awesome.

My philosophy teacher, for example, opened class with prayer. Then all at once, we dove into a plethora of elaborate definitions and mind-frying philosophic syllogisms seeking to substantiate the unfathomable crevasses of human thought and its bleak attempts to fathom the existence of God. Yeah, afterwards... that's pretty much how I felt. But for a former AP student, it was refreshing to be so intellectually exercised. My greatest fear about choosing Biola over a more prestigious Stanford or UCLA was sacrificing academic excellence and a good scholarly challenge. One day of class taught me that my expectations were wrong. Honestly, I can't remember ever being so happy about having been so mistaken.

With all this praise I have lavished upon you regarding Biola, it's important to remember that I am still in the world, and that this isn't heaven on earth. Biola's students and their relationships will leave you sunken-spirited at times, but it's important to remember that you get out of college whatever you put into it. My choice (like Joshua), is that I will serve the Lord. Remembering this, I know that here at Biola, here in Stewart, here in HöM, my blessings and adventures in a life of independence have only begun.

Journal Entries

• A New Home
• Frost, Forest, Floor... Action
• Spiritual Approachability
• Bounding With Bounders
• Cracking The Ice
• A Sight for Sore Eyes
• Saturday Night Fever: The New Way to Hit the Town

Subscribe to my journal