Saturday, August 27, 2011

The joy of the Lord is my strength.


God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear, even if earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea. Let the oceans roar and foam. Let the mountains tremble as the waters surge!...The LORD Almighty is here among us; the God is Israel is our fortress.
-Psalm 46:1-3, 11.


Woooow.
Wow wow wow.
Wow.

My first week of college is officially completed! And MAN am I in need of some serious sleep. This week has been SO crazy, and awesome, and stressful, and exciting, and frustrating, and full of joy!
I am SO SO SO pleased with my choice of coming here.
All it took was a week for my mind to have the reassurance I needed. It really is great to be at Harding.

So Thursday I woke up and we left about 7 o'clock in order to get to Searcy and move in by the time Impact began full-swing. After 5 hours of driving I started to get SUPER sleepy, so my dad had to finish the trip for me. It was such a strange feeling pulling into the campus, no longer a visitor, but as a student!

I got all of my things into my room super easily thanks to the football players, and began to unpack right away. It was super surreal and scary. I was unpacking my things to stay! It's not just camp or a retreat anymore, it's my life now! And actually moving myself in to live in that reality for the next 4 years is a weird, weird thing. Thinking about home and the fact that when I go back it will only be to visit. I don't officially LIVE at my house anymore! Whenever I go, it'll only be to visit. This is considered my home now!

I finished unpacking and hung out with my family and with my roommate and suite-mate. The energy on campus made the day go a lot smoother than I was expecting. Seeing everybody else excited about being at Harding took my mind off of the worry and made it focus on the positive. And there IS so much positive to focus on here!
My mom came Friday night with my clothes, and I finished moving everything in. The first night wasn't scary at all! It just felt like a sleepover or something! I didn't feel like everything was permanent. And to be honest it still doesn't!

Our room is black and white with turquoise, and it is super super cute! :)






All the pictures make it feel like all my friends are with me! :)

The first night my roommate, Bridget, suite-mate, Ashley, and I just hung out in the dorms because we were so tired from the day! But from the next morning on it was going going going.

The freshmen move in over the weekend, so Harding has an event called "Impact" just to get us involved and friendly with new people! Dinners, functions, energy groups, bands, and meet and greets. So much fun stuff to do, you really couldn't do it all! I was really nervous, because it is not in my personality to step out of my comfort zone and put myself out on a limb, hoping the person I'm talking to is friendly back. So the first two days were NOT fun. I just felt so out of place and homesick. Saturday morning my parents left, and that was hard. Saying goodbye to my Dad, Mom, Mags, and Alex was almost too much. Knowing it was the end of the road for us as the family I've always known, and the beginning of me discovering myself and learning how to make this college thing work.

The weather. Oh the weather. It feels like 95 with humidity that makes it seem 105. My hair never ever curls up in humidity, but the first few days have made my hair wave! It's insane! And we aren't allowed to wear shorts to class, so it's been jeans for me all week! No fun!

Then Saturday night we had a function called "The White Party" for dinner. Our freshman theme is "So Fresh and So Clean", so they threw us a "fresh and clean" dinner to end Impact. I met up with some girls that Lindsey had interned for before, and we went to it! It was so cool seeing all the white! So we're standing in line talking, and I asked these two girls behind us to take mine and the girls I was standing with's picture. She did and we started talking and they were the sweetest girls in the world! And actually we're all best friends now! Brittany and Paige are so outgoing and precious, and they have most definitely turned my time at Harding around! I was worried about how things would go (which is a bad idea because God always seems to make me feel silly for it when He provides later), but since I've hung out with them, meeting (literally) more people than I could count, I've had such a blast and my anxiety is completely gone. We just laugh and laugh and laugh together, and that's exactly what I needed.

Sunday night me, a couple other girls, and Brittany and Paige sat out in the hall and were just talking, and we decided to have a dance party! We danced to the Cha Cha Slide and the Cupid Shuffle. It was too funny. And eventually more girls came and joined us! So great.






So the weekend passed andddd we get to classes. All of my teachers are nice! My favorite is absolutely my Speech teacher, Dr. Frye. He is so so funny and cracks up at himself! And you can tell he has so much wisdom and insight to share.

What surprised me the most about classes is how much READING we have to do! Three of my teachers' assignment on the first day was to read chapter one. Now a chapter doesn't sound too bad, but when you've got THREE to read, and psychology's first chapter is 30 pages, that's a lot! Especially when there are a ton of friends you would much rather hang out with!

Note to self: time balance=killer priority in college.

I've only had one quiz so far, and it was in Bible.
I love my Bible class. Every day we sing a hymn before we get started, and then we just listen to Mr. Cloer lecture. It sounds boring, but it's actually interesting. It's so cool learning about the church and the traditions of old. It truly is such a blessing to be able to go to a school that can actually teach me the most important lessons of life.

So the classes haven't been TOO bad, it's just the assignments that kick my booty!

Thursday night we had a drive-in movie on the front lawn to Space Jam, which I've never seen, but one of my friends texted me and told me there was something called "Racquetball Devo" going on at 9. So Paige, Brittany, and I left and went to it! IT. WAS. INCREDIBLE. A ton of us crammed into this little racquetball room and just sang and sang and sang. The echo was so beautiful. I couldn't help but think that if THIS sounded so amazing, I can't wait to hear the chorus in Heaven. Because it really did blow me away. I videoed probably 5 songs, but here's just one to give you an idea.





Amazing, right? And it was lead by students! No lesson. No devotional thought. Just singing.

College has been such an amazing time so far. With the Sonic and Wal-mart runs, deep conversations with my guy and girl friends about spiritual things, laughing, taking fun pictures, and meeting so many incredible people. And there are SO many incredible people here. Everyone is so nice and friendly. I've made SO many friends and it's only been a week! I whole-heartedly love Harding and have yet to feel sad away from home! I think it's just because I'm so busy, my mind hasn't had time to wander and dwell on what I'm missing, but I would much rather it be that way instead of missing them all the time!

Well! I think that's about it for my first week! I'm so so excited to be here! I'm just really going to have to buckle down and study a lot. Speaking of, I've had a lot of hesitation in my mind come up about my major. I'm only in Chem 114, and I'm already kind of struggling with keeping up since it all moves so fast. There are a lot of concepts that I'm not understanding, and we have to rush through them to complete the lesson for the day since there's so much. And it's the easiest science class I'm ever going to have! I don't know. Maybe it's a way the Holy Spirit is communicating to me early that I'm going to need His strength for college to be successful. For my career hopes to be successful. Maybe I just need to tough it out and find myself on my knees for a couple weeks before I seriously consider changing. But until I know, the joy God has given me this week will be my strength!

Until next time!

P.S. IT'S GREAT TO BE AT HARDING!

2 comments:

  1. I love you Holly! So glad you love it at Harding! I miss you so much!! By the way, you're totally helping me decorate my dorm room. You're so cute! :) Love you!

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  2. So good to read all of this! I knew you would love it at Harding. Even though I def wanted to be selfish and have you at UA, Harding will be perfect. You're going to learn SO much about the Lord and meet so many people with awesome things to teach you about Him and who are doing radical things in the name of Christ. Praying for you and Alex I know it's tough. But so worth it!

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