SCL

I’m a newlywed wife and have been for nearly nine months. In those nine months, my husband and I have fought almost uncontrollably at times and have even spouted the dreaded D-word. Divorce. Why, do you ask?
Our pasts.
My college experience was one of much partying, much sex, and probably two hundred intense hangovers.
If you think that those things don’t affect you during or after college in your marriage, your friendships, your families, your heart – every single aspect of your life, then please, be my guest and go right ahead.
All I can say is thank goodness for a loving God who forgives, and is working in my heart and my marriage.
Shoot me an email if the secular college lifestyle and valuable experiences work out for you. You can try to prove this wrong.
Ladies, if you need someone to talk to, I’m starting a bible study through a new church plant in the next couple of months, but I’d be glad to carry over the teachings into an email correspondence or possibly a blog.
kamaoliver@gmail.com

Great post!

I would also tell them that by keeping their ‘ears and eyes open’ to God as they learn, studying can become a fascinating and layered experience.
When you’re learning a subject that is interesting on it’s own, God showing you an additional perspective about it can be powerful for the individual, can lead you into a profound time of worship, and may even provide great insights to bring forward to your professors.

Oh I miss school.

Very good and although it might be a little embarassing to hear some of this, it’s extermely important.

And I had great college sex, but then, I got married my sophomore year and it was only with my wife so there you go! I don’t have anything to compare it to, but marriage sex is definitely the best.

If I ran I Christian High School I’d have you on the next plane out to give this exact message.

As a college student myself who is constantly fighting this divide (and who sees my friends all around me losing this battle) I can’t express enough how good this post was.

Nicodemus at Nite “And seriously, when do we hear stories of alcohol strengthening relationships?”

Do Lewis and Tolkien count?

A quote from C.S. Lewis taken from a letter in which he discusses his get togethers with Tolkien:

“It has also become the custom for Tolkien to drop in on me of a Monday morning for a glass. This is one of the pleasantest spots in the week. Sometimes we talk English school politics: sometimes we criticise one another’s poems: other days we drift into theology or the state of the nation; rarely we fly no higher than bawdy and puns.”

They also regularly smoked pipes at such gatherings.

If only I could find such a gathering place apart from all the bars in my college town.

@ Vicki in NC

You would be more than welcome if I still lived there. I sold it a little over a year ago now. No snow like that in NC?

Don’t be afraid to use collegiate academic intellectual pursuits to strengthen the faith of the body.

“Ask your parents. Then go throw up.”

I almost lost my ‘I’m a substitute teacher and I have no emotion’ veneer when I read that.

My advice to graduates would be, “Hey, I have a great post I want you to read on SCL…”

I think I’ll pass this along to our youth pastor.

@clark
That house is adorable, it looks so peaceful covered in snow and alas, no snow like that here in the NC piedmont.

But thanks for the good intentions!

Vicki

My number 1 piece of advice would be: Find what you’re really passionate about and put every drop of your energy into it. Don’t compromise or settle for what everybody else wants you to do. If your passion is vocal music, but your parents complain that “you can’t make money doing that” don’t let them talk you out of it unless you really DO want to be a forensic zoologist. God gives us our passions for a reason. Follow your God-given passions and not somebody else’s interpretation of success.

I graduated last year and finished my first year of college yesterday. My advice would be:
1. Stick with the girls (or guys, depending on who you are.) I came to college a mess. I cried under a maple tree during my second week there, in broad daylight, between classes. I texted a girl I’d known for three weeks at midnight. I was eventually persuaded to admit where I was hurting. And I have more friends now than I ever have in my life. Find the people who are willing to love you and let them. Then turn around and do the same.
2. You won’t come across time to spend with God. Plan it. Or else it won’t happen, and you’ll wake up 2 weeks later and realize you haven’t prayed at all and hate where you are.
3. Eat with people one-on-one. This may sound obvious/not that important, but it’s been one of the most helpful things to me. Amazing people that the rest of the world has discovered so they never have free time have to eat too. I’ve had some of my best conversations over dinners that I completely ignored.

As a recent HS graduate headed off for college, thank you dearly for this post.

Jon- Awesome. Thanks for telling it like it is.

Everyone else- Awesome. I am encouraged today.

Me? Well, I had to go live on a different continent away from the college mess I had made (also known as study abroad)…then I finally let God out of the box and there was a lot of painful growing to do. But my last year of college was pretty….awesome.

Also:

Married sex rules! (Imagine the cheerleaders from SNL.)

That no matter how far you fall away from Christ during college, he’s waiting for your return with open arms. However, don’t assume that you will have the opportunity to return.

You may not be giving a commencement speach but you are invited to speak to my youth group about this post any time you will. Really keep going with the list, hit drugs hit drinking hit poor choices all you want i know how much we all wish we could do it over again and i wish that more people were bold to talk about the real issues. I do with our group but another voice would be sweet. I really mean it would you share something like this to a youth group, over skype or phone or video message would be sweet. I feel like my kids would really connect to you and your writing, because i have used your posts many times in my sermons and they love the stuff. Let me know if you would ever do something like this.

Such a good post. I just finished a 4-year degree & I totally agree. While I was at a Christian college (pursuing a religion degree, amusingly enough) I still found times when God was in the box under the bed because I just didn't trust Him to get me through. But you really do realize just how bad an idea that is in the long run. And I officially think that the "Dont do college sex" suggestion is REALLY overlooked & therefore a much needed reminder.

Thanks for what you do man. I'm pretty sure your blog is going to be a big part of my optimism plan for the post-grad-no-job summer ahead lol. So yea, thanks much.

Great post today!!! I just forwarded this to all of the seniors I know who are graduating this week…

I can’t agree with you more. College was the time when I made huge strides in my relationship with God, learning about Him, myself, and my relationship with Him. I don’t know how I would have made it through with my sanity intact without God.

The way I see it, you can either go though college with God and learn all about Him and yourself, or can go though college without Him and learn about hangovers and the loneliness of one-night-stands.

Amen to Point 4!!!

LOL! I love the variety of viewpoints in these comments! People who have had the “fun” and are now living with the scars, people who fought to do it the right way and are now reaping the benefits, people in college, people with kids in college, hilarious! I can see times in my life when I’ve completely agreed with each of them.

That relationship with God is vital, though, especially when you realize that there is no clear next step after college and how in the world do people find jobs with no work experience and WHY did I never do an internship… *cough* Well, I guess there are dark places in every stage of your life, and facing any of those without God seems pretty terrifying.

I would come at it from the opposite angle. I gave Him my college years, and I had the most amazing six years (yes, six) of my life. I met more friends, had more parties with better bar-be-cue, more late night fast food runs, more random jam sessions, more sunrise parties, more fun, more purpose, more impact, and more spiritual growth than I could have imagined coming out of High School as a marginally saved student.

And I have a friend couple who went to beeson divinity school and samford a couple of years before then I think, named Matt and Emily… they are stinkin awesome.

Awesome post & amen to all.
But it doesn't require going away to college to put God in that box. I did it, too. I did 2 years of college locally, bought a house at age 20, & was considered very "responsible" because of it, but God was still shoved pretty far under the bed, & I only got His box out to peek in it every once in a while.

It took a divorce, broken relationships with friends & family, & more to break me enought to permanently get that box out of the bed and let God have control of my life.

thanks Jon! we totally threw our college years away, and even though we didnt do the “really bad” stuff, my husband and I both just lived for ourselves and each other only. wasted years they were…
it funny how God has put us in college ministry now…we get to experience it all, almost the way He wanted us to back then, but we get to lead students and encourage them NOT to make our mistakes!

We would add:
~Either stay connected to the church you’ve been at, OR find another church and get involved there. Its so important to be connected to a church body while in college! it gives the opportunities to serve, be mentored, have fellowship…
~use your resources, time and money, wisely. you’ll NEVER EVER have as much time on your hands as in college! use it to grow closer to God, develop relationshipos, go on missions trips…things that really matter.

thanks Jon…great post.

Hey if more people spoke up and shared what you shared we could really spare alot of heartache and hurt. You can come talk to my youth group anytime! Awesome post! Can I copy this to give to my grads? Thanks Rhonda

I just graduated from Arizona State last week (yes, the Arizona State that didn’t give President Obama an honorary degree). After 5 years, I would tell believers to get involved in a serious campus ministry. Here’s the scenario that happens too often: Christian kid comes to college, starts going to a church with the same denomination, realizes that the church is vastly different, stops going to church, gets involved in other groups that college has to offer (which far more often than not is not a God-honoring group), looks just like the non-Christians. It’s a sad but true reality. Look up statistics.

I got into a campus group that really cared about me individually and because they cared about my growth, I grew. Now I’m going to work full-time for the organization. If you want to donate to my cause, leave a message on my blog. J/k, but if you do want to, I would greatly appreciate it.

Skip the drinking, volunteer to be the designated driver with your best friend instead. Stick a box of donuts on the dashboard and a trash can in the backseat, and it’ll be a fun night. If someone gets rude/obnoxious/has really awful smelly puke, drop them off at the wrong house, park down the street, and watch what happens. (Not that I ever did that, uh… that would be BAD.)

In all seriousness, though, DO teach your kids how to help people who have drinking – they need to know the difference between “he needs to sleep it off” and “she needs the ER.” They might save some lives.

I graduated from UNC two years ago. I had a wonderful experience and made some amazing christian friends. Though I don’t typically believe in having regrets, I would love to offer college students, and HS grads a few things I wish I would have known and acted upon:
1) Make Christian friends AND non-christian friends. Having only one or the other can be really dangerous.
2) DTR early and often. (DTR= define the relationship) Especially in christ-centered male-female friendships, the danger of gray-area relationships is real, and it’s REALLY hard to get past. Just because you aren’t “bumping uglies” doesn’t mean you are protecting your heart, and you gotta know where both people stand.
3) Hang out with real grown ups. College friends are awesome, but the perspective of the older and wiser (even if just a few years out of college)is so important.
4) Worship the Lord, not your favorite christian organization. Cru, YoungLife, navigators, RUF, intervarsity etc are all wonderful and can be great places to begin and grow faith BUT don’t let those orgs and their activities be a substitute for your own time with the Lord, and for your own contemplations about the bible and what it all means. Don’t let the
bureaucracy suck your soul away.
5) the morning after: clean the vomit away the rim of your toilet seat, take some advil, drink some water and forget about it. Don’t let the guilt from messing up consume you. Guilt is NOT of the Lord. You are human, it happens.
6) Let people change. One of the biggest ways we (unsuccessfully) cock-block the Lord’s call on people’s lives is by not letting them change. This is especially true in college, when people go through a lot of changes. So if someone is wasted on Saturday night and does the walk of shame straight to church on Sunday morning don’t write them off as a hypocrite. Changes happen little by little. Love people where they are.

thanks for your brutally honest words. i think you pretty much summed up my college experience, and what i would tell people. i might add: calling a spade a spade. drinking two to seven nights out of the week to the point of obliteration is called alcoholism, not college.

and i’d recommend the book unprotected by miriam grossman, a psychiatrist who works on college campuses and is speaking out against these harmful behaviors that are endorsed and condoned by health professionals…so good! wish i had that at freshman orientation.

I would tell them all you said. Great post! I have dealt with my guilt for years and forgiving myself came years after God had already forgiven me!

I pray your sister has a great time at UNC (my alma mater) with God. He is there-alot of people over look Him though!

My friend Jennifer referred me to your blog today…I’m so glad I stopped by. My oldest daughter just graduated from high school this week and is leaving for college in the fall. I definately want her to read your blog. Thank you for having the faith to write your beliefs and share them with us. You have a gift…truly.

Thankyou so much Jon.. I really needed to hear that

Awesome post!

this desperate feeling for love and being liked gets so strong when your in college …it’s so easy to get so blind and search for ways to satisfy that need in all the wrong places…

thank you for all you said jon…and thank you to all who sent in comments …hav no idea what it feels like to know i’m not the only one that wants to walk a different path …am praying for a Godly group that would encourage me and help me grow to be more of who i’m meant to be..

One thing though: casual sex is not the same as sex with in a loving, committed relationship. I’ve had it both ways, and I totally agree that casual sex does not teach you anything you need to know. I’m not very prone to regret, but the few hookups I’ve had only made me realize how much I missed having a relationship and didn’t fill any need I felt. they only emphasized my lonlieness at the time. But sex within a relationship is a very beautiful thing. I don’t think that having sex with more than one partner in a lifetime is so very sinful, as long as you treat yourself and the other with love and respect. I respect those people that wait for marriage, I just don’t think it’s necessary.

It burns me up when all sex outside of marriage is treated like quick fixes, like the only reason people have sex outside of marriage is out of lust. No, people in relationships love each other in quite the same way people do that are married – and sometimes more. I believe that that context (love and commitment and respect) is the context you need for good, holyish sex. Had to get that off my chest.

I've been looking for this exact list. This will be very helpful for talking to kids at my church.