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A New Chapter Begins

I had been out of high school for nearly six years when I started to think about going to college. You could say I kind of swapped the conventional path. I got married right out of high school, started a family, and got into the working world of restaurants and blue-collar jobs. It was great, and I have a lot of respect for careers in the trades, but as the years passed I began to learn more about myself. I hit seasons of deep doubt about many things I had never questioned before. I found how deeply I loved literature and philosophy and the process of wrestling with ideas. Through this discovery I came to two conclusions: I wanted to dedicate more of my life to reading and writing both for my own sake and for the sake of raising children in an increasingly confused world and I felt I would be well suited to a career involving connecting with people, like a high school teacher. So off I went to pursue jumping back into the academic world.

Weighing Options: Choosing a Path

When my wife and I began scheming about the transition to school, we considered first the option of moving away from Chattanooga and whether or not to pursue a larger, secular state university versus a smaller, private Christian college. In the midst of considering this, we visited a church that we fell in love with, making nearly instant and deep friendships there which prompted us to stay in town. All I had to settle now was whether I wanted to attend a Christian college or not. After living in Chattanooga for four years, I had met a few ÀÇÓѸó graduates in different work settings. Many of them impressed me as excellent and thoughtful individuals and struck me as the kind of people I would like to think deeply with.

Cultivating Balance: Harmonizing Responsibilities

Of course, I knew it was going to feel like performing a juggling act on a treadmill to jump back into school at the age of 26, married, with toddlers. I was pumped for sure but also slightly terrified. There were all sorts of concerns I had thinking abo