Preparing for University

Starting University has to be one of life’s great emotional cocktails. There is the excitement of this new big step, almost rite of passage, getting out from under the parents feet (and glare!) and setting off into a new world of independence, something that has been on your mind since you were 8 and a half but now at last it is reality. Then there is the apprehension of this new big step, almost rite of passage, getting out from under your parents… Yes, independence comes as both an adrenaline rush and a crippling fear! No one waiting up for you is balanced by no food on the table. No one asking questions about who, why and where you are going is balanced by the complications of how to use washing machines. For some moving out of home can leave a sense of insecurity in almost an experience of culture shock. I have seen students who have been in Africa for eight weeks in the summer before arriving in Derryvolgie and then struggle to deal with their first week at University even knowing they are going home the next weekend! So, any advice? Let me think… Ok… some practical tips and an inspiring challenge.

First up, do not be frightened to let someone know if you are struggling with the transition. You are not the first and certainly will not be either the last or the only one in your year feeling a little rattled. Find someone to talk to and if you like cry with. There has been many a tear shed on my wife’s shoulder in our bungalow in the first few weeks of a new term (and not only mine!).

However, that piece of advice leads to another that needs to happen first; get connected. If you are going across the water then plug in quickly to a Church where there will be a pastoral support as well as a place to worship on Sunday. Check out if there is a Chaplaincy. They might have, like we have at Queens, a full programme of events but even if they don’t a Chaplain is a good port of call in a University storm as they will have a pastoral ear, experience of your situation and the practical connections you might need for counselling, careers advice, welfare advice or to the University in general over failed results or whatever. They have a little authoritative weight in a University setting; use them! There are also Christian Unions (CUs) in every University, so join and meet people who share your faith. CU will have a programme to help stimulate your Christian mind, encourage your spiritual growth and give opportunities for outreach. So get connected.

As you get involved in Churches, Chaplaincies and CUs, or even all three, can I advise that you watch for burn out. I am seriously thinking at Queens this year of programming a NON CHRISTIAN EVENT TUESDAY where we encourage our students, who can through CU and Chaplaincy be at a Christian event every night, to take a night off Christian meetings and involve themselves with the wider University, socialising with non Christian friends or engaging in clubs and societies. This will save you from the stunted growth of a Christian bubble existence and also allow you to be salt and light in the University.

So let me inspire as you go! You have the opportunity over the next few years of growing leaps and bounds in your emotional, social, cultural and political lives as well as in the academic (at times you will need to remember that this is why you are there) and most important of all, the spiritual. When my students appear at our door that first day I don’t look at who they are as arrive but who they might be when they leave. I have watched personalities transformed, minds rewired and spiritual lives explode into deep desire to part of God’s Kingdom and bring his will on earth as it is in heaven.

Someone told me while I was at University that if Paul came to earth now and was strategically planning his missionary journeys he would go straight to Universities. As he pinpointed Athens and Rome as the cities which were most influential for spreading the Gospel out across the world so your University is equally strategic. There will be people in your Halls, classes, seminars and societies who will leave to take up important roles across the whole face of the earth. If you can introduce them to Jesus then who knows what might happen. So, do not limit yourselves to Christian friends and when you make friends from other faiths or no faith treat them, with respect and love them in a Christlike way opening up conversations that will allow you very genuinely to share the faith that is in you. Be as gentle as a dove and wise a serpent and not the other way around!

Whether your experience at University will be life in all its fullness or not will depend on how much you give to it. If you stand on the ledge looking into the dangerous potential fulfilling chasm below and decide to move away from the ledge and have a safe old time then you will be like the steward, that Jesus spoke about in the parable, who when given a talent by the Master buried it in the ground and gave it back safe but un-developed when he returned. But if you jump, get ready for the dive and exhilarating experience of your life. Ahead of you is a plethora of people, experiences, thoughts and actions. My advice is that you should suck the very marrow out of. Go for it.

And as you go, some theology! Let me give it one word GRACE! Always remember that you are a child of God, if by grace and grace alone, you have connected with God through Christ’s life, death and resurrection. Make sure that grace and what it has given you is your identity in a University of wild characters. Then, don’t see that grace as only a ticket in but as the very engine that drives your Christian discipleship. Yield to God’s spirit whose fruit is faithfulness and self control among others, but those will be the ones needed most for these three years! And unlike the Galatians trust the theology of your Scriptural Presbyterian heritage and never replace your trust in God and his grace with the constraints of rules and regulations. When my children cross the road they go through a meticulous set of Leviticus-like regulations before they can cross, watching and listening while they do. I have a tendency not to use such a labourious technique now that I am 45! However, I realise that as I cross in my own individual way that I am unconsciously applying all the rules I learned back as a child. I have grown up and they have become a part of me. And so apply all you’ve learned in Sunday School and Church and grow up into adulthood remembering always that the grace that brought you safe this far… (and well done for getting to University)… is the grace that will lead you home.

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