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I had the opportunity to interview Grove City College’s Disability Services Coordinator, Zach Brown. In this interview, we discussed how Mr. Brown came to be the Academic Resource Center’s Disability Services Coordinator, what services are offered, and even what students should do if they feel that they would like to have access to these services. I make a few comments throughout the podcast about my own experience with Disability Services and the blessing that they have been to me throughout my time at Grove City College. I hope that this interview is informative, helpful, and even encouraging to those listening.

Click the picture to listen!

 

During the summer of 2021, I had the amazing opportunity to work for my local State Representative, Rob Mercuri of Pennsylvania’s 28^th legislative district. When Rep. Mercuri approached me during the previous winter about interning at his office, I jumped at the chance to learn from this experience. I was even able to apply to get credit towards my major with my internship.

I started the internship in June of 2021. I  learned how to use the systems to track data, how to record constituent complaints and suggestions, and how to reply to constituent inquiries. It was interesting to see over the course of my time at Rep. Mercuri’s office the different viewpoints on the same issue. The office is located in an area where I have spent a lot of time, and I had not considered the different opinions and viewpoints of all the people that live in District 28. Through responding to constituents, I was able to learn a lot about current events, local government, and the happenings at the country’s capital.

Throughout my internship, I worked on many projects, one of which was called the New Resident’s Guide. This guide was to be sent out to constituents who had recently moved into the district and consisted of hotline numbers, school districts, places of worship, emergency services, and many other items with their contact information. I worked on this project from start to finish utilizing many different platforms to create a booklet for new constituents. We were able to send out these guides to over 180 new constituents when it was finished. I also had the opportunity to go to the state capitol in Harrisburg, PA. I got a tour of the capitol, met with Rep. Mercuri’s Harrisburg office staff, and sat in the balcony on the House Floor to be recognized by the Speaker of the House. Towards the end of my visit, I got a glimpse of a protest inside the capitol building rotunda. It was interesting to be exposed to that since I had never seen one in person before.

I learned a lot through this internship that I will be looking back to throughout my time at college as well as after school. Internships are an amazing way to get workplace experience and also to figure what careers you may have an interest in. Many companies offer internships, and Grove City College is eager to work with you to help you find them. I am so thankful for the opportunity to work for Rep. Mercuri and get college credits at Grove City for my work.

Every year, Grove City College hosts a Career Fair where companies come to our campus and meet with students to tell them about potential jobs and internships to apply for. I was able to attend the 2021 Career Fair this past week, and it was a great experience in learning how to develop a resume as well as how to talk with potential employers. Even if I was not sure what I was interested in, I tried to get as much information as possible if I wanted to look into those companies later. I highly encourage college students as well as high school students to take advantage of any internship opportunities available to them.

 

As a student at Grove City College, I have many opportunities to get plugged into different clubs and organizations on campus, all of which provide amazing opportunities. However, the best experience I have had so far is with Orientation Board. Orientation Board is an organization on campus that has the mission of creating a welcoming and exciting orientation process for incoming freshmen students when they arrive on campus. One of the many jobs that the Orientation Board has is assisting freshmen and their families with their belongings on move-in day. As a freshman who experienced this amazing service, I thoroughly appreciated the move-in-day process with the help of the Orientation Board members.

Within the organization itself, members are divided up into different committees. Each committee orients itself towards specific kinds of tasks, for instance, OBP (Orientation Board Publicity) is in charge of jobs like updating our social media page as well as being photographers to document the events from that year. Personally, I was on the Religion Committee. These committees help plan events like our annual service project and Sunrise Service, and we also host a prayer walk for all of the Orientation Board to pray over each building on campus before freshmen arrive.

This year was my first time as a member of the Orientation Board, and I was excited to be a part of an amazing group of people who had hearts to serve incoming students. As a member of the Religion Committee, we are each given events or tasks that we will be in charge of setting up or carrying out throughout our time welcoming freshmen on campus. I worked with another person on orchestrating our annual Sunrise Service. This event featured a morning worship service as well as a senior Orientation Board member as a speaker to bring a message of encouragement to freshman students. This was personally my favorite event to attend as a freshman, and I was delighted to help make it a wonderful experience for new students. The process of setting up and preparing for this event was a challenging but wonderful experience. I gained experience in the delegation of tasks, communication with team members and faculty on campus, as well as problem-solving to make this event run as smoothly as possible. The event turned out great and provided the freshmen an opportunity to turn their gaze towards Jesus in the midst of one of the biggest transitions in their lives.

The students who make up Orientation Board are some of the most amazing people I know. They are all great leaders with servant hearts that desire to give incoming freshmen the best Grove City College arrival they can. I plan to join Orientation Board again next year for another Christ-minded, servant-hearted, and leadership-building experience. Although Orientation Board facilitates an entire event dedicated to helping students find clubs and organizations to join on campus, any student wondering what organization to join should take a serious look at OB.

The transition from high school into freshman year of college has the natural potential to be challenging in many ways. For freshmen in 2020-21, the pandemic certainly contributed to the challenges, but could it have been possible that the pandemic might have actually added to students’ college experiences as well?

For Rachel Goetz, a sophomore entrepreneurship major with a minor in sales, the pandemic certainly presented its own challenges, but also provided her with a unique experience at Grove City College. Online classes with people she had never met, mandated masks anywhere but her room, a lack of social events that could take place, the looming risk of a two-week quarantine, and contact tracing lists a couple hundred people too long were all minor pieces of life at Grove City College during a time which sometimes sounded impossible to enjoy. For Rachel, though, there was joy amidst it all. She experienced community that, arguably, was more intentional to creatively find ways to invest in one another than in past years, and that was all Rachel hoped for entering into her freshman year of college.

I guess the idea that “people appreciate more of what they did not know they had” became a very real thing for the Grove City College community. When asked how she would describe the Grove City College community, Rachel said, “Impactful…everyone has good intentions of building relationships more.” She commented on not only the community of friends she found within her peers, but also the professors’ intentionality in wanting to get to know their students outside of the classroom. “Professors want to get to know you and will take the time to do so,” is how Rachel put it. Although the pandemic complicated the church scene, Rachel also found community members within local churches that were excited to creatively invest in her as a student and sister in Christ. In whatever fashion you experienced the pandemic, it is not hard to understand the challenges that arose because of it, but Rachel said, “Coming to Grove City College has meant to me that I get to grow in my faith spiritually and find life-long friends who will help me do that,” and that is seemingly what she continues to find, even amidst a world-wide pandemic.

Rachel’s advice to incoming freshmen is this: “You’re here for school, but don’t let that become your entire experience. Live without regrets…. You have your entire life to work.” See an attractive opportunity? Try it out! Meet a new person? Grab a meal! Find an adventure? Go for it! College will provide you with plenty to do…take advantage of that! You only regret what you do not try…isn’t that what they say?

High school concludes and the next step is seemingly college for many, although not the case for everybody. Some might be forced into this next step, some may choose this next step, some may see no other option, if the future is to hold what they have in store. Senior management major Joey Astrab certainly saw the advantages in going to college in order to get a good job, but also saw college as an experience he did not want to miss. “A little bit of everything” – a necessary next step, a means to an end, and an experience that leads into the next stage of life – is Joey’s idea of college.

It comes as no surprise that Joey’s idea of college is “a little bit of everything,” because Joey does “a little bit of everything” as well. A college athlete, a Beta Sigma fraternity brother, a member of the homecoming committee, a member of the Student Athletic Advisory Committee (SAC), and a management major student at Grove City College, Joey set expectations for himself prior to coming to college that have benefited him well. Joey said his expectations were set for him, in a way, which were to “get good grades, get involved, stay on top of things, and learn as much as I can,” while also “making new friends and finding out what I want to do with my life.” While Joey set high expectations for himself to do his best in all he was involved in, he recognized that life is not all about school, and there is value in not making college all about school. His biggest piece of advice to any incoming college student was to “make the most of your experience and don’t make your life about school… Get involved in things outside of school. It’ll give you a mental break, distract you from school, and teaches you skills you can’t learn in the classroom.”

Although it makes sense to step into college expecting that it will lead to finding a vocation, college does not necessarily just hand you the future. While it is common for some people to have a grasp on their future plans, it is not particularly common for everybody to have that grasp… even as a senior in college. Joey is actively becoming closer to future plans, but has nothing solidified and is open to finding anything that he enjoys doing. It is not just about money for Joey. What college has provided Joey with is this: the knowledge necessary to pursue many careers, interpersonal skills, lifelong friends, and memories worth a lifetime.

Coming into college, I was in a pretty chaotic headspace. I had a lot of deeply rooted personal issues that I knew I needed to confront, but I did not know how to on my own. On top of that, for most people, the adjustment to college from high school tends to be overwhelming to varying degrees, and I certainly was not exempt from those feelings of discomfort. Adjusting to a new schedule, trying to make new friends, and navigating my own personal growth was a lot to handle. But thankfully, I did not need to do it on my own.

Grove City College has one of the top-ranked counseling centers in the nation. According to the 2020 Princeton Review, the College’s counseling center ranked 14th in the country, and this is for good reason.

From a strictly pragmatic view, the counseling center is incredibly convenient for students to access. It is right on campus, making it is easy to get to. There are also many hours of availability, so it is easy to get an appointment set up. They do all the heavy lifting for you when it comes to scheduling. They are able to pull up your class schedule and see what counselors have openings according to your availability, then give you a list of options to choose from. Cost for service is factored into every student’s room and board, so there is no additional fee for any sessions.

From a more interpersonal view, the counseling center has various counselors that cover a broad mix of personality types. This means students can be paired with a counselor they feel comfortable with. If a student tries out a counselor but realizes they do not feel like they can be entirely open with them, the center is more than happy to pair the student with a new counselor until they feel they have found a good match. I was able to find my counselor on the second try, but many students are happy with their first pairing.

All the counselors at the school approach tackling mental health with a Christ-centered focus. This is not to say that they give the message that “you just need to pray harder and all your problems will go away.” Rather, the counselors understand that we are all broken human beings that do not have the strength to solve all our issues on our own. They do not give advice from a place of judgment or disappointment, but rather, from a place of empathy and desire to see us get better. Furthermore, because they are counselors and not therapists, the relationship you build with the counselor is very laid back. Even though the counselors are highly trained professionals, they feel like an insightful friend instead of a cold, hard-wired psychologist.

In my experience, my counselor has been a great mentor to help me determine which issues are valid and which I am blowing out proportion. When my issues are valid, she has helped me come up with detailed methods to overcome them. When I am making things bigger than they need to be, she has taught me how to recognize my own unhealthy mental patterns so I do not create more unnecessary issues for myself in the future.

I would highly recommend for anyone at the school to take advantage of the counseling center, even if they do not think their issues are that big. Having a trained professional help me navigate personal stress from an unbiased point of view has been an incredible help in my time at college, and my experience has been so much better because of it.

Some people see college as a new beginning, a chance to step into the next stage of life and grasp independency. For some, though, college is a chance to take control of where they were and did not want to be in the future… a preventative measure, one might say. Addie Slate, a senior double-major in Biblical and Religious Studies and Social Work, came to college with a “preventative measure” mindset. She said, “College was the next step to get me from where I didn’t want to be… I didn’t want to be at home and working at a low-paying job, and I wanted to be independent.” Addie entered into college assuming college was the means to achieve her goal, which was to avoid being where she feared ending up in life, but her college story does not end there. College became a valuable experience, an outlet of connections, and “one small stop on the path to where I want to be.”

“I thought, ‘This is going to be the worst thing ever,’ but it wasn’t!” Few optimistic expectations were set in Addie’s mind before coming to college. She expected it to be challenging, expected it to be lonely, and assumed failure. Rather, she discovered that college was, indeed, challenging but achievable and full of people who would love her through friendships deeper than she could have imagined. Sometimes it simply just takes time to find those people, and waiting can be lonely. Her initial low expectations propelled her to become exceedingly more passionate about her experience at college, which prepared her for her future in unpredictable ways.

When asked the question, “What has college provided you with, as you enter into the next phase of your life?” Addie said, “Friendships deeper than I could’ve imagined, people who care about me, both at Grove City College and surrounding, a deeper relationship with the Lord, and confidence in who I am and Whose I am.” Notice that none of these provisions directly correlate with her initial idea of college – “the next step to get me from where I didn’t want to be.” That is because what Addie was given through her experience at college did not prepare her to succeed in avoiding where she did not want to be, but rather, college provided her with an experience that empowered her to succeed in confidently knowing who she is, knowing Whose she is, and discerning the path that lies ahead…where she wants to be.

Addie’s piece of advice for anyone considering college or entering into a new phase of life is this: “Know where your identity lies and invest in that…everything follows after where your identity lies.” For Addie, that identity rests in Christ. Addie is a dedicated Young Life leader at Grove City College and said, “I would rather be serving the Lord and doing ministry than have a 4.0…not that I would have a 4.0 if I wasn’t doing ministry.”

I joined a fraternity my freshman year at Grove City college, and it has given me so many opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to experience.

Firstly, the fraternity has given me a stable community I have been able to fall back on throughout my entire college experience. After joining in the spring of my freshman year, I was immediately integrated into the group as a fellow brother. In the fall of my sophomore year, I got the privilege of being able to live on the hall with the rest of the fraternity and have done so during the rest of my time at the college. Grove City’s Greek Life doesn’t have off-campus housing, but the college still gives each group a designated hall in the on-campus dorms, and this ensures that the groups still get to grow in community together. One way we get to do this is through weekly Bible studies. Our fraternity chaplain comes up with the study plan for the semester, and we as brothers get to challenge our beliefs and grow closer to God in community. Knowing that I will get to have these enriching experiences every year by living on the hall has been a huge relief when it comes time to plan for housing at the end of every year.

I have also had the opportunity to partake in special fraternity events each year, like fall and spring parties, formals, and homecoming. These events give a great opportunity to decompress from academic stress with fellow fraternity brothers and make long-lasting memories. Greek groups also get to organize many of the campus-wide events during the fall rush season. For larger events, fraternities will occasionally coordinate with housing groups or sororities to throw joint events. This is a great way to form new relationships by bonding with other Greek groups on campus and meeting the new freshman class.

My time in my fraternity has also given me a lot of experiences that will help prepare me for post-graduation life. Firstly, I have had the opportunity to hold officer positions in my fraternity since my induction. In my time, I have been the historian, secretary, and president. These positions have helped me grow in my organizational, communicative, creative, event-planning, and leadership skills. Furthermore, I have had the chance to do a significant amount of community service with the fraternity. Getting to give back to local communities while bonding with my brothers has been one of the most rewarding experiences in college.

All in all, my time in my fraternity has put a positive spin on so much of my college experience. I have been able to grow closer with so many people I otherwise probably would have never come in contact with. I would recommend to any incoming freshman that they consider joining a Greek group at Grove City as it adds a significant layer of depth to the college experience.

It was never my dream to go to Grove City College. Considering the fact that I was born and raised in the small Western Pennsylvania town, I was ready to experience something new.

Growing up, I imagined going to college would look like it does on TV — moving cross-country away from everything familiar and starting a brand new life. That is not how it looked for me, though. On my freshman move-in day in 2018, I got out of bed, loaded up the car, and arrived to campus in less than five minutes. Saying goodbye to my parents was not too emotional considering this was their fourth and final time sending a kid to college. Also, I was within walking distance from home and knew I could see them any time. Quickly after they left, though, something happened that I wasn’t expecting — I felt like I was not in my hometown anymore. I had entered “The Bubble.”

Students and faculty often refer to the Grove as “The Bubble,” painting the image that, when you are on campus, you are living in your own little world. This is certainly the case.

Grove City College has its own tightly knit community. With a student body of about 2,300 young adults, it does not take long for campus to shift from feeling like unfamiliar, uncharted territory to a mini-world where everyone recognizes each other. People that were once strangers on move-in day quickly become classmates, neighbors, teammates, group project partners, SGA representatives, and more. By the end of the first year, you recognize most faces on any stroll through campus.

One of the reasons this camaraderie forms so quickly is due to Grove City’s small class sizes. While many colleges hold class in crammed lecture halls, a large class here would be one with 30 people. This intimate learning environment opens the door to in-depth class discussion where you build bonds with classmates and professors.

Another reason for this is that many people on Grove City’s campus share similar values. Because the college is so forward about their conservative Christian values, the school attracts many like-minded individuals. This creates an environment in which students can openly grow deeper in their beliefs and shape their worldview with other students. In the humanities courses that are required for all students, professors present challenging debates and ideas observed throughout history, helping students learn how to navigate them for themselves so they can grow deeper in their own beliefs and opinions that will shape them for re-entry into the “real world.”

This re-entry can be jarring at first. While Grove City’s campus community is inviting and enriching, it is still a bubble. Jumping back into everyday life outside school can feel like a bit of culture shock. This, however, gives students and recent graduates the opportunity to truly test the values they solidified in the classroom. Maintaining strong work ethic and holding oneself to a higher moral standard make Grovers stand out in a culture where it is becoming increasingly more common to have an apathetic attitude towards work and let go of traditional values.

Standing out in this way, though, is not a negative thing. Grovers catch the eye of employers quickly and often find fast roads to success, with an average placement rate of 96% within six months of graduation.

While I was pretty indifferent about going to Grove City before I got here, I am so thankful for the experiences I’ve had and the friends I’ve made while being here. Graduation is just around the corner, and even though I’ll have to prepare for yet another major life change, I can rest easy knowing that The Bubble laid a strong foundation for me to launch forward.

College – “the best four years of your life.” Sound familiar? While college is rightfully not for everyone, those who choose to go to college typically go with expectations of what is to come – rigorous or easy classes, Greek life, campus events, activities to do in the surrounding area, clubs to get involved in, dorm life, food, and campus culture. Once college becomes reality, expectations are then unmet, met, or exceeded and no one ever seemingly discusses how these play into peoples’ perception of college. My hope is to begin this open-ended discussion for prospective students before they step onto campus by interviewing students who have diverse opinions of college.

As I personally considered my answer to the question, “What does college mean to me?,” I enjoyed being able to look back on where I started, where I am headed, and how college has significantly impacted me in ways I could have never predicted.

I walked into my freshman year with little desire, excitement, or optimism for Grove City College, mostly due to unfortunate personal circumstances. Despite my involvement in Young Life, campus events, bible studies, and other opportunities, I found myself floating through freshman year and maintaining an existence, rather than a presence, on campus. There was no true place for me on Grove City College’s campus – I believed it. I found myself lost in my major, lost in community, and lost in direction. “College will be the best four years of your life” was seemingly becoming a lie that had greater impact on me, as I found myself struggling to enjoy my time spent at Grove City.

While I would love to share with you how my circumstances drastically changed, I would argue that the issue was not rooted in my circumstances as much as it was in myself. I never loved learning in a classroom; I never found my best friends; I never discovered the best four years of my life; I never achieved anything great; and I never truly felt like I found my place in college. What college did become to me was this, though: an opportunity for me to gain an experience that continually further equipped me to step into the Lord’s active calling for my life, the place where I learned that I do not have to achieve great things to achieve greatness in Christ, and the place where I also recognized that if I am, ultimately, living purposefully to be in the world but not of the world, belonging is not a part of that equation.

College – the most transformative four years of my life…a more accurate depiction of what college has meant to me.