Life as a 24 Year Old

The years of early adulthood have to be some of the most confusing of all life. I’m thinking particularly here of the confounding nature of contact with the opposite sex during the immediate post-college years. College was a beautiful time for many reasons, not least among them the contact one had with friends of the opposite sex. It’s a really good thing to be able to develop friendships with girls in normal ways. Something is right with the cosmos when you can hang out with girls and guys and have fun, non-pressurized interaction. I was able to do so both in college and right after it, when I was working in DC. The church in which I served had a strong mass of young people, and we had a great time hanging out, going to events, eating, and generally getting to know one another in healthy ways.

All that has changed with a shift to seminary, as one would expect it would. For those curious about what seminary life looks like on the ground level, it’s a fairly bleak scene. If you don’t go to a large church where there’s lots of young people, it can be particularly rough, as there are almost no regular opportunities to interact healthily and normally with girls. You’re reduced largely to hurried post-class conversation—“Good lecture, huh?”—which really sets the world on fire, or on awkward and forced conversations in places like the gym or coffee shop. “I’ll take a mocha, please. By the way, what are you doing tomorrow?” Ugggh. Being in this environment makes one yearn for a context in which guys and girls can meet one another without pressure and stakes. Until that happens, I guess one is pretty much confined to conversation that is often awkward and difficult. There’s good in such situations, though, for one learns to trust God, wait on Him, and make small talk as interesting as it can possibly be.