Part Three of Reflections on “What Makes grove City College Home?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Kinley Bowers ’26 \u00b7 Contributing Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In college, my cousin Sid was one of those goody-goody overachievers who ran numerous clubs, made besties of his professors and never looked a B in the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, I called to ask him about life in the \u201creal\u201d world, and he was sitting in his dark apartment, wrapped in a blanket to save money on electricity while eating soup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSoup is the cheapest food you can buy while maintaining a sense of dignity. I am at the bottom of the food chain.\u201d But don\u2019t be deceived: he also just married his true love, moved to England and is doing work he loves \u2014 a summary that certainly paints his life in a different light than that of the troglodyte soup slurper above. There are at least two vantage points from which to view every story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before graduating, before deciding to move back to my hometown and live with my grandma, before getting a job teaching, writing and editing for the Delightful Art Company, the alum life looked a little menacing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I took this concern to my ever-optimistic father, and he reframed it with a phrase that I have since worn thin: \u201cThis is exciting, Kinley! The future is sparkling with uncertainty.\u201d The future can loom, or it can sparkle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t mean to romanticize the scrappy, soupy, post-graduation afterlife, but there is something exhilarating about independence and ownership. There is a thrill in the stinging newness of a thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As expected, I\u2019m finding I must dig a little deeper to discover opportunity and community than I did at college. For some reason, the city of Harrisonburg fails to provide an OB committee or an Org Fair. But as Dr. Bilbro once said (in the privacy of his office), \u201cthere are many ways to become a vegetable,\u201d and so we must continue to dig, seek and build so we may grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There cannot be growth without some form of change. That\u2019s growth \u2014 the result of positive change across time. Grove City College, that brick fortress populated with big hearts and big minds, was a chapter in my story, and it will inevitably affect every subsequent chapter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each phase of life exposes new strengths and weaknesses within us and unveils unprecedented joys and sorrows around us. When we are introduced to a new plane, it angles our perspective afresh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We can choose to appreciate this prismatic quality of life, or we can tramp a flat line through it \u2014 afraid, careless, blind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Outside the academic establishment, I find that the hands-on things of life have continued to instruct me in a not-so-didactic way: things like picking up a toothless stranger who had wrecked his bike (I don\u2019t necessarily recommend this as a habitual activity); accidentally killing a gut-hooked fish and crying all the way home as civil war music played over the car speakers; cradling an eyelid-less baby purple martin, placed in my hands by the head editor of Plough magazine; reading aloud C.S. Lewis while my students sculpt hrossa; driving to D.C. to hear the dying Ben Sasse speak on gratitude and work; making meals with my grandmother every Tuesday night; listening to the cr\u00eape maker at the farmer\u2019s market rave about Arvo P\u00e4rt; holding a bouquet alongside a friend as she makes marriage vows; singing hymns around the fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even disciplining myself to do what terrifies me so I might learn more of this \u201cnewness\u201d and look back without regret \u2014 these little things have taught me much. I love the Wendell Berry poem that starts like this: \u201cThe years have not brought him the philosophic mind. The years have brought him love and grief.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of life\u2019s lessons cannot be distilled into written paragraphs or taught from a lectern \u2014 but they can and do grow our hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While plenty of Grove City\u2019s students already have perspectives that transcend grades and resumes, life as a graduate is forcingme to live beyond them. How should I live on my own? Do I still strive for excellence? Can I carry myself in solitude as I do in company? Will I see the sparkling prospects ahead or metaphorically sit in the darkness beneath a blanket? (Sorry, Sid.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How beautiful it is when our character can steadily grow in wonder, humility, love, faith and thankfulness regardless of our circumstance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Part Three of Reflections on “What Makes grove City College Home?” By Kinley Bowers ’26 \u00b7 Contributing Writer In college, my cousin Sid was one of those goody-goody overachievers who ran numerous clubs, made besties of his professors and never looked a B in the eye. Recently, I called to ask him about life in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[215,9],"tags":[178,100,241,29],"class_list":["post-2735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","category-perspectives","tag-2026-edition","tag-kinley-bowers","tag-oct-2-2","tag-perspectives"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"puruckermt24","author_link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/author\/puruckermt24\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Part Three of Reflections on “What Makes grove City College Home?” By Kinley Bowers ’26 \u00b7 Contributing Writer In college, my cousin Sid was one of those goody-goody overachievers who ran numerous clubs, made besties of his professors and never looked a B in the eye. Recently, I called to ask him about life in…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2735"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2893,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735\/revisions\/2893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}