Odyssey at Yale: From Start to Finish
At 6:30 in the morning of April 16, 1970, I received a telephone call from one of Yale’s alumni representatives, a sanguine, early rising doctor, in Spokane, Washington, my hometown. Looking at the world through drowsy, half-opened eyelids I heard him say: “You’ve been accepted.”
Four months later I boarded the first airplane of my life and headed East to begin my college career. I was completely mystified as to what Yale would be like. Everyone I talked to who could speak with any authority on the subject painted a different picture for me, and by the time of my departure the easel of my imagination was as befuddled as a quadruple exposure. I honestly did not know what to expect.
So it was with a whole mixture of emotions, excitement, apprehension, wonder, and hope, to name a few, that I arrived at Yale. In the coming weeks, realities replaced conjectures.
One thing I discovered was that everyone who had described Yale to me had been right—from his own point of view.
Yale was a bazaar of a little bit of everything
In those first days before classes began Yale seemed like an oriental bazaar to me, exotic, fascinating, a little bit of everything. I met people from places I had only read about before. The possibilities for exploring new interests seemed at least as numerous to me as the multi-million books in Sterling library. Yale was a good deal more than I had expected.
Then came the settling-in process. First there was the business of moving into a dormitory suite with complete strangers. Early on I experienced a light case of culture shock. I was assigned to share a room with two other freshmen, one a gregarious, aggressive Brooklynite, and the other an often-morose musician from Chicago. I had expected it to be a very novel experience, which it was, but it turned out to be jarring as well.
Then there were studies. Earlier I had had visions of being pleasantly and scholarly immersed in my college work. But what I encountered was not the bracing academic challenge I had envisioned but a deluge of work that descended on me without warning. I was staggered by the amount of work involved in just keeping up.
I also found that all the personal problems that I had contracted in my ante-Yale years refused to disappear. Not only had they followed me all the way to New Haven, but they seemed to thrive in my new environment. I was constantly surrounded with people, but the loneliness that I had known earlier was still there.
Nameless fears that I had had in high school were augmented, the draft seemed to loom over me like a menacing cloud, and I now had another worry: grades; something I never had to be concerned about in high school.
Where was the romance? Where the glory of “going to Yale”?
I had so much studying to do in addition to my busary job—emptying dirty trays in the dining hall—that soon the only free time I could allow myself was Friday evening. On my second Friday at Yale I went to a widely advertised party which was held in some freshman’s dormitory suite. I wandered in around 8:00. The room was dimly lit, about as crowded as Grand Central Station at rush hour, and as stuffy as a sauna bath.
One girl in a long white dress was wafting around the room smearing everyone’s forehead, nose, and cheeks with iridescent paint. Someone shoved a drink into my hand. As I took a sip and peered down into the cup I noticed that at the bottom there was a smudge of glowing red paint. It must have dripped off someone’s nose into my drink.
I gagged, set my cup down and returned to my room. Looking at myself in the mirror as I scrubbed off the shining red war pain I told myself that things had to change. Suddenly I was tired, discouraged, and lonely all over again, but even more so.
Sitting down to sort things out I remembered back eight months. Back then, surprised by animation and unfeigned joy in a newly arrived teacher in my high school, I had become curious and began to ask him some questions.
“Why it’s the Lord that makes me so happy,” he told me.
Up to then the Lord had never made me happy, sad, or otherwise. God seemed distant and unimportant to me, and how calculable an effect can a Being like this have on anyone’s life?
I was so spiritually impoverished
Comparing the personal contact he had with God to the void in me, I realized how spiritually impoverished I was. One evening, convinced that I wanted what he had, I simply and honestly asked Jesus Christ to come into my life. I asked him to wash my sins away with the blood that he shed on the cross, and to let me know him on a one-to-one basis. Since then things had definitely changed. I knew that my prayers got through to God, that he loved me, and that Jesus had died for me.
Yet when I arrived at Yale so much happened so fast that the importance of this experience began to dim. I had been rushing around so fast that I was in danger of running right past the only person who could be of any real help.
That certain Friday night made me acutely aware of the fact that, if I was going to graduate from Yale intact, I would need God’s help and strength in my daily life. In my short weeks at Yale I had already seen how some turned to marijuana, drinking binges, immoral living, movie jags, and record-playing marathons when they needed help, or something to lift them out of discouragement and depression.
Soon I began to meet in earnest for morning prayer with several other students who had had the same experience I had, who knew their sins were forgiven and that Jesus had come into their lives in a real way. This equipped me for days full of classes, studies, and work. As I turned to God for help, I found that he was fully able to see me through mid-terms, finals, papers, and all sorts of rough spots. I went to Bible studies twice a week and learned much that no college course can offer.
Through his word God showed me how to live a simple day-to-day life, trusting him and avoiding those things that would destroy my close relationship with him.
God provided for all my needs
Through four years at Yale I was amazed to see how God provided for all my needs. When I needed clothes, and didn’t have any money the Lord provided plenty to wear. Even though tuition went up and up and up I graduated without a terrific debt.
The Lord freed me from fears and solved problems that I had become so accustomed to that I was sure they were an integral part of me, and that I would have to live with them for the rest of my life. He also helped me much in my studies and as a result I graduated with honors.
As I look back on the past four years I see how important it was that I decided to believe and trust in God, and in his Son Jesus Christ. This faith became the foundation stone, the point of reference, for all I did at Yale. It strengthened me, gave me directions and opened to me a college career blessed by God—and now that I’ve graduated—the promise of a bright future.
I could spend the better part of a week recounting the way in which Christ used particular circumstances, people, and Scriptures to help me and teach me. But I have a better idea. Discover what I discovered for yourself. Let my teacher be your teacher. Let my Savior be yours.
He was speaking to you, too, when he said: “Come unto me…take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30).
Lawrence M. Senger, ’74