A Five-Point Story: Bethel

05|05

This point five of five. This means this is the end of my story; so far...

Transferring is hard. I did not like transferring. It was kind of a big hassle always emailing advisers, learning a new campus, a new system, learning the lingo of what is what. I mean, Bethel has BC, DC, AC, CC, HC, RC, SRC, CLC, and Sem and that took me like three weeks to learn.

I never wanted to go to Bethel when I was searching for colleges my senior year of high school because that is where a lot of people went from my high school. I applied because it was my back-up plan and never intended to actually go there.

My goal was to be the first sibling in my family not to transfer. My sister transferred, my brother transferred. I guess it's a family tradition now.

Anyways, Bethel has been good so far. I almost went through the same motions that I went through at Baylor but in not as grand of a scale and it took a lot less time to get acquainted with people here at Bethel. I guess it is either because people at Bethel are a lot nicer or because I had one year under my belt so I had a little experience.

I knew a lot of people from my high school when I came to Bethel and that was nice, I had quite the supporting cast, something that I lacked at Baylor.

I always imagined Bethel as being a New Life sister and I think that it is true. It seems to be pretty unorganized like New Life was. It is a lot larger than New Life but small on a college scale.

I owe my smoother transition to Bethel toward my experience in the past and towards the comfort I feel being closer to home. I tried a little bit harder getting involved in campus activities. Now, I really didn't do that many activities but after I read the book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" by Donald Miller I was convinced I had to do something. So I, on a whim, signed up for a Spring Break mission trip to New Orleans. It turned out to be a good trip, a trip that I feel I would have never done while at Baylor.

Bethel has been more supportive for me in my spiritual life. I didn't go to chapel all the much in the fall semester because I didn't feel like it. My excuse was always that Baylor chapel ruined the concept of chapel all together but really I just would rather read a book. Spring semester though, near the end of the semester I finally came around and started going to chapel and I started enjoying it. I heard some good messages, some not so good. I now had a group of friends to go with which makes it easier to go.

And now here I am in my final week of my first year at Bethel. I've learned a lot, I think. I am now realizing it is a lot harder to write about the stuff that has just happened to you. Probably because you haven't had the time to think through it or because you told the story so many times recently it is not very exciting.

My five-point story ends here, but my story is still being written.