This is my kindergarten picture. When I think of myself as a college freshman, this is what I see – a little girl. I was so excited to be in college. Our parents started saving when we were very young. Their dream was that finances would not determine where we went to school, as it had for them. We would be able to attend “any college we were smart enough to get into.”

Oh my goodness I was so young: seventeen, bright, curious, innocent and full of opinions/knowledge/pet theories about everything.

Though I thought of myself as pre-med at the time, the class that best met my expectations of what college learning would be like was “Old Testament.”

We sat around a table with a professor who looked and sounded like Moses. I was enthralled. He used big words like biblical exegesis and hermeneutical interpretation. I had heard my dad use exegesis in conversations with minister friends. Though he never defined it, I was pretty sure that, based on context and having no idea how the word was spelled, it referred to those parts of the New Testament where Jesus was not in the scene. He had exited, exit-Jesus.

My leaps of perfectly logical assumptions continued. I was sore at my dad for not telling me about Herman and his interpretive methodology. It sounded like everyone else knew of and appreciated this guy. Why hadn’t Dad clued me in?

The required books were expensive and hard reading, but I expected college to be difficult.

My classmates seemed quite a bit older, but I’d grown up in the country and everyone knows that city living is stressful. What with pollution, crime and bad traffic, I was not surprised that city kids aged faster.

My classmates gave me weird looks and there was just enough that felt off to make me look at my registration card, again. Oh good grief! Instead of signing up for Religion 108, I’d signed up for 801. I was embarrassed and so disappointed. I loved that class!

This story has come to mind many times since 1978. Whenever I have to do something hard — begin a new job, move on from a relationship, etc. — this story pops up. It is my reminder of loving a good challenge, even one that goes a bit sideways. After all, the class I wasn’t supposed to be in was one of the best classes ever. 😎