I Can’t Fix Everything

Last week was a bad week. They happen. I was kind of expecting it. By Friday morning I was convinced I was going to make myself feel better.  How? I basically just did a bunch of things that I always want to do but consistently tell myself I don’t have the time for it. I bought Ben & …

Final Stretch Towards Spring Break

As of Monday, Hope’s campus has come back to life. The snow has melted, students are studying in the Pine Grove on blankets or in hammocks suspended between trees, frisbees are flying, and students have said good bye to winter parkas and hello to shorts and t-shirts. While the outdoors are pleasant and inviting with its …

Woah, We’re Half Way There. Woah, Livin’ on a Prayer.

There are less than 70 weeks of classes left of my time at Hope. That’s the timeline facing any current sophomore that is graduating in four years. We’re almost halfway there. And it’s kind of scary. There are a lot of things that I have no idea about that I need to figure out over the …

Critical Issue: Life After Hope

What are you going to be when you grow up? This question never seems to disappear. When you are little it is easy to pick an answer: teacher, zookeeper, astronaut, astronaut that teaches people about zoo animals in space. However, in college things change. That question takes on a new kind of weight. Tonight Hope’s annual Critical …

A Check Off the Hope Bucket List

Today the ladies of Van Vleck Hall and I checked a dream off our Hope College Bucket list: Kelly Knapp agreed to having us over for a baking party at her house. Yep. We got to bake cookies in the President’s house. The inside is just as beautiful as you think it would be. It …

A Grand Weekend Adventure

I spent this past weekend with my friend Ashley in her hometown of Grand Haven. It happened to be the weekend of Winterfest, in which there are all kinds of activities from human sled races (people pulling a dog sled) to a hamster and gerbil race at the local YMCA. But my favorite event was the …

Smells Like Pickles

If you go about a mile down 10th street from Hope’s campus towards Lake Macatawa you will find yourself in Kollen Park. Kollen Park sits on land that used to a basket factory in the late 1890s into the early 1900s. Eventually the land was bought by Martha Diekema Kollen who gave the land to the city of …

What’s in a Name?

The snow is falling down once again on this beautiful snow globe of a campus that I am so happy to call home sweet Hope. It’s not always pretty and magical and happy. College is hard, life is scary, and you are surrounded by people trying and succeeding to figure stuff out while you are …

A Chance Encounter on a Hope College Sidewalk.

There are a lot of reasons I love Hope College. Two of my favorite reasons: (1) the people of Hope, and (2) the way God moves through them. Let me give you a little taste of why in this throwback story to just before the semester break… It’s Friday, the week before Finals, and I …

Suddenly It’s December.

Thanksgiving just happened. A week and a half remain in the semester. This weird El Niño winter is dropping rain showers instead of pretty snow on campus. It seems like October was yesterday yet now it is suddenly December and any student you ask is feeling it. The last few weeks of the semester are a rush and …