"One morning, near the end of a semester, it was really early and my roommate Charity was already up. I hadn't gotten much sleep, because I'd put things off till the last minute. So I was still in bed, only half awake. And my subconscious does not have a sense of humor. When my alarm went off, I picked it up and said, 'Charity, what kind of guitar is this?' She said, 'Sarah, it's not a guitar, it's an alarm clock, and it's going off.' I was like, 'Charity, answer my question!' She just said, 'Sarah, in your little world it may be a guitar, but in reality, it's an alarm clock. Turn it off!'"

"I was told a long time ago, 'If you want to be a great person, hang out with great people.' I think that's true of your spiritual life. If you want to be really deep spiritually and really tied into God, hang out with people who are sold out to God. At Kentucky Christian, there were a lot of people who were really sold out. It was a great opportunity to go to the next step. I had the chance to be educated by great professors and learn more about God. That, to me, is the biggest reason to go to a Christian college."

"Wheaton College started getting me thinking about what I wanted to do with my life and how my Christian background influences what I want to do. You look around at the world and you think, Man, there's got to be something more to do. A lot of the people I met at college were really trying to push the envelope, to do something amazing and change the world. And so many have. I'm always meeting people on the road who say, 'Hey, yeah, I went to Wheaton College. I just spent 10 years as a missionary in Bolivia' or something like that."

"I can't remember what my expectations of Taylor were, except for this: I knew that I was going into a community where nobody knew me. It became a significant point in my Christian life to be able to say, 'All right, for the first time, nobody's going to be rousting me out of bed to go to church. Nobody's going to be keeping tabs on my quiet time or what my personal life is like.' I can remember pulling over on the shoulder of the road as I was driving to college and saying, 'God, this is an empty page and a clean slate for me. I want to surrender myself to this process.'

That feeling of a new beginning has always been significant to me. We need new beginnings. We need watershed times. There are few that compare to your freshman year at college."

"I remember when I was at Lee, they would have what they call convocation, once in the fall, and once in the spring. It was a time of reprioritizing your life. We'd look at the things of God and what he was doing in our lives. For me, the convocations helped me spend more time with the Lord if I'd gotten off track because of classes or relationships. Those were just really special times.

I think it's times like that at a Christian college that make a huge difference in your life. You're surrounded by people who love God, and you're taking this journey together by trying to help one another out in deepening your walk with the Lord."

"One of the professors I still bump into today was my voice teacher. Her name is Miriam Porter, and she was really more of a friend and an encourager—a real sweet spirit. You could always meet her in the office and talk to her if you were struggling with your major, with a relationship, or whatever. She was just a real encouragement and prayer warrior—and she still is today. Whenever I see her, she says she's praying for me and cares about what I do."

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.