I’ve been talking a great deal about being thankful lately, but something odd happened this week–the day before Thanksgiving, in fact. I was at a bonfire with my erstwhile classmates, talking college. They would ask me how Grove City was and I’d say “Great! I love it!” which was perfectly true, but then I’d go on to elaborate, and somehow everything that came out of my mouth was negative. I was spewing more criticism about my school than I had even thought, and I’m the type of kid who thinks a lot. I kind of think I sent everyone home with the impression that Grove City is awful, and I am a whiner. The former is not true in the least, but the latter, well, yes.

So, here’s my attempt at a remedy: a cute little countdown list of the top eight things I do not just like but actually love at Grove City. It is both a counting of my blessings and an impudent assertion that whatever junk I happened to be babbling the other night, my school is still better than yours. Here we go…

8: All the dumb little things. Sherri’s omelettes, having the warmest room on the hall, not having to take one’s ID out of one’s wallet to swipe it, and a ridiculously large number of dances.

7:The campus. If you have not seen this place, you should come visit me, if only to stand in the middle of the quad after dark and get lost in Harbison’s stained glass. Really. Even the boys’ dorms are pretty, and who bothers with that?

6: Grace Anglican. I still am happily coming to terms with the fact that I can worship with the same literature that I study in Brit Lit. Also, actually kneeling is a good way to begin to learn humility.

5:The HUMA core. Don’t laugh at me, dear fellow Grovers, but everytime I think about the point of this whole Humanities core, it give me hope for…well, everything.  Go ahead, willingly stuff your mind with all the things you should know, but didn’t really care to learn…until they were learned and you were suddenly smart and thankful. Hurrah for cultural literacy and a love of everything good!

4: Found Ed. It’s really history and philosophy of education, and oh, how I love it. It is giving me all these brilliant and radical ideas about how to glorify God better with our minds…so if you happen to care about that, I have some books to lend you. If you disagree, I might even argue with you. It’s becoming that important to me.

3: Warriors. There is nothing I need more on a Thursday night than to throw my hands in the air and sing, “Praise Jesus!” And that’s exactly what I get to do for an hour in a dark chapel crowded with hundreds of other people doing the same thing. I’m usually pretty needy by nine on a Thursday.

2: Dr. Brown. There. I said it. And on the world wide web, too. I sort of hate that I can work my tail off on a paper, and have no idea whether I’ll even get a B, but mostly I love it. I’m being challenged, and let’s face it–that’s new. Oh, how I am learning–the woman knows her business. And she makes lovely scones.

1: The Family Pantry. That was inevitable. You should have seen it coming. The reason I will always love Caldwell is because of the people, and Grove City is no different. The girls on this hall are worth far more to me than any education I will ever recieve. I could never leave because I would have a FamPan-shaped hole and they’d have an Alice-shaped hole, and really, I ask you, how could we be expected to cope with that? We couldn’t–so here I am, and here I stay.

Also, Grove might be home. For brief, disconnected moments, you know…