During my freshmen year of college (at Virginia Tech), I spent a lot of time and emotional energy on the drafting, re-drafting, completion, submission, and stressing over of a transfer application to another school (the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). UNC had already rejected my first-year application; however, its department for my major (Classical Studies) is considered one of the better ones in the country, it is closer to my home and loved ones, and I even know quite a few people, including close friends, who go there... Okay, admittedly, I also like their basketball team quite a bit. At any rate, I knew that I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn't even try to give it a second shot. Carolina could have been the perfect place for me, for all I knew.
Throughout the academic year, from the moment I decided to apply until some time after UNC replied with their decision, this potential transfer and its consequences were often at the forefront of my mind. From the get-go, I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn't make up my mind about which school I wanted to attend until after such time as UNC informed me I was accepted. I admit, though, that if someone had asked me the old "If you had to pick" question, my answer would have changed every two weeks or so.
Even then, I had to admit that my problem was far from the worst kind. After all, VT is a high quality institution at which I quickly made many friends and developed solid relationships with several communities and professors. But, as I said before, there was certainly good reason for me to abandon these friendships and relationships in pursuit of certain academic advantages and closer proximity to loved ones. In a way, this inner debate was more of an emotional strain than might be expected. If I was accepted, then I would have to make a choice between two places I loved; a choice between two sets of people that I care about. It would be an understatement to say that the constant mental reminders regarding my unsure future had an emotional effect on me during my first year of higher education.
After a time, being the genius that I am, I realized that this was the kind of situation that it would be beneficial to pray about (as if there could be such a thing one ought not to pray about). In fact, I would say that this was exactly the kind of thing that our Lord was talking about when He told us by command and by example to pray to the Father, "Thy will be done." So that's what I did. I often asked God for the opportunity to choose my school, but more importantly for the clarity to accept a four-year experience at Virginia Tech as God's will for me in the event that Carolina's decision should come back negative.
Thus, after more than several weeks of drafting, paperwork, and meetings with the right people, I submitted my application and waited. Come mid-April, when transfer decisions were finally released (after several stressful delays), I found myself staring at a computer screen bearing the words, "We are sorry to inform you..." I can honestly say that, outwardly, I took the news quite well. I wasn't unhappy to stay where I was with my good relationships and my well-adjusted new life.
But as time caused the finality of my rejection to sink in, I became somewhat bitter, particularly toward those faceless men and women at UNC Admissions. I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't a shoe-in, but I personally knew people at UNC that (in my certainly biased opinion) perhaps didn't deserve to attend as much as I thought I did. I had good grades in high school, and in my first year at Virginia Tech I was a Dean's List student with quite a lot going for me in regards to my major. This rejection stung my pride (that most central yet most subtle of the Seven Deadly Sins). Whether or not my feelings were accurate, it is clear that I was paying lip service to the Big Guy during this time, claiming that I accepted VT as the "place I was meant to be," yet still resenting the fact that my choice had seemingly been "taken away from me."
Lately, I am rarely bothered by this lack of choice that once felt so undeserved. Only recently, though, did I start to truly consider the higher meaning behind all this. In a conversation over dinner with my girlfriend, the subject of my schooling came up. She, being a student at UNC (and trust me, if anyone deserves to be there, she does), asked me if I would ever apply there as a transfer again. Other people have asked me the same question, and my usual answer goes something like this: "No, probably not. I could maybe do it if I really wanted to, but I'm just not willing to go through that business all over again." I stand by that answer; it's entirely true. But it's also a blatant cop-out, and my girlfriend deserved more than the standard I-don't-feel-like-applying-again response. So I decided to explain to her something that I myself didn't fully understand: my belief that God wants me at Virginia Tech.
The big, fat mistake I made was prefacing my explanation with something to the effect of, "Now, I'm not that sissy person who says it was meant to be every time something seemingly bad yet bearable happens, but..." My advice? Never offhandedly throw a comment like that into a conversation with my girlfriend unless you can back it up, because she never misses a beat. She's very perceptive, and will immediately call you out if you deserve it. And I definitely deserved it. Who am I, that I claim to know what the Big Guy influences or intends? Seriously, I'm always saying stuff like, "American Christians think they can afford to put serious devotion to a Higher Power on the back burner because they fancy themselves 'self-sufficient' and 'independent.'" That may be true, but it looks like I unwittingly proved myself right, because it took several months of bitterness and a well-deserved calling-out from my awesome girlfriend for me to find the log in my eye this time.
We aren't merely "a planet of playthings [that] dance on the strings of powers we cannot perceive," as the holy trinity so aptly put it (no, not that Holy Trinity, but the great prog rock power trio Rush). Yes, we human beings have free will. Nonetheless, we aren't entirely in control. It would be futile for me to try and pinpoint an exact moment at the admissions office or a specific sentence in my application that the Almighty influenced so as to keep me at VT; in fact, I highly doubt that there was ever an obvious divine snap of the fingers that changed the course of things. God doesn't always work in ways that we understand, because to fully understand the Divine is to be the Divine. We can never understand as God does, no matter how much we like to be in full control. The point is that, even if the will of God seems complicated to us, He does have a will for all things - even things as mundane a college application.
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart;
and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him,
and he shall direct thy paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6
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