March 18, 2002

There are a number of questions that people ask me a lot. Other than "You do own a comb, right?," the number one question I'm asked is, "So, Chris, how is it that a person with such obscenely high standardized test scores and thick glasses ends up at a little Church of Christ school in Arkansas, of all places?"

Well, I’ll tell you.

First, there’s the filling out of the application, then the whiting out of large portions of the application, then the mailing of the application, then the purchase of great quantities of unnecessary dormroom furniture, then the—oh wait. That’s not what you meant. I see.

You want to know how come I’m not attending some prestigious and pretentious Ivy League school in a state that voted for Al Gore. After all, why would anybody voluntarily live somewhere as friendly, warm, unassuming, and occasionally religious as the Southeast? These are very difficult questions to answer, mostly because they are so long and wordy. But I will do my best.

There are several reasons that I like Harding. First, but not necessarily foremost, I like the atmosphere of the place, notable for the lack of cigarette smoke and fertilizer fumes (common at David Lipscomb). There are no shattered beer bottles in the parking lots. There are no puddles of vomit just outside the door to my dormroom. Overall a very welcome change from Central High School.

Now, I understand that all this stuff still goes on at Harding. There’s still plenty of drinking, smoking, vomiting, worshipping with instrumental music, etc. It’s just that at Harding, it’s all been driven underground, where I can easily pretend it’s not there.

But wait, Chris, you say. That’s not healthy. In the “real world,” this kind of thing happens all the time, and unless you get accustomed to the depressing misery of the real world now, you won’t be prepared for it when it hits you upside the head later on. The real world is harsh and sad. People don’t attend more than four Bible studies a week. People don’t pray over their cafeteria “Hamburgers-in-a-Can.” Bathroom graffiti does not consist of “God bless you.” What’s more, in the real world, people won’t put your TV show on the local network just because you happen to have a camera and obscene amounts of free time. The only answer I have to that is I already got accustomed to the depressing misery of the real world at middle school. Give me a break. (Look, now you’ve got me all defensive.)

The second reason I like Harding is the people. There are greater concentrations of unbelievably nice people at Harding than at anywhere else I’ve been. You know the type of person I’m talking about. These excessively friendly, ever-smiling people. They always have a compliment for you, or a question to show how really interested they are in the minute details of your life. You never hear them say anything even slightly negative.

For some reason, I have trouble trusting these people, even though I thoroughly enjoy their company. To me, this world is full of people, ideas, and institutions that are just begging to be ferociously mocked. I can’t comprehend how these perfectly intelligent people resist the incredible temptation. It gets so bad that sometimes I print subtitles for them in my mind as I listen to them talk, just because I can’t believe they actually mean what they say:

INSANELY NICE PERSON: Wow, Chris, that TV show you’re making sounds interesting, humorous, and wildly entertaining.

SUBTITLE: But if you happen to accidentally hang yourself with the video tape at the iMac lab, I would probably laugh... and then I would criticize the quality of the film.

Third, Harding has a good computer science department. This is actually a rare thing in a small liberal arts college. Most liberal arts schools thumb their noses at computer science. “What? Computer science?” they cry. “Yuck! I’m sorry, but we don’t offer anything so relevant or useful here.” Surprisingly, you won’t find a computer science department at many Ivy Leagues, Little Ivies, West-Coast-Pretend-Ivies, or even Schools-That-Might-Be-Little-Ivies-But-They-Don’t-Have-A-Department-For-The-Study-Of-Canadian-Lesbians, such as Davidson.

Fourth, only Harding could make me feel like a liberal. When I was in high school, I was often considered a conservative, since I believe that the Bible is more than a book of suggestions and that Al Gore is far more annoying to listen to than George W. Bush. But at Harding, I am a liberal, since I don’t have major qualms with instrumental music in worship and I believe that having women deaconesses is, in fact, totally scriptural. Not that I especially enjoy appearing liberal, but I do have a vicious streak of iconoclasm and contrarianism in me, something that I probably don’t want to encourage (too late). Odds are, no matter where I end up in life, I’m going to be in the minority opinion-wise. It may not always be fun, but it certainly makes life interesting.

So, there you have it. Harding is a great place, and I’m very happy here, in case you were wondering. And, yes, I do own a comb.