Frosh Anticipation

It's that time of year at Waterloo once again. The campus is crawling with Frosh decked out in purple, white, pink, and indescribably coloured shirts (the last one possibly due in part to whatever food-like substances they've drudged through this week). Everywhere, there is excitement.

I always get a little nostalgic at this time of year. In the fall of 1995, I had my own Frosh Week at Waterloo, and this was the Frosh Week to end all Frosh Weeks. If you can think of something they tell you not to do at Frosh Week, we likely did it. After our Frosh Week, the entire university seriously re-vamped the Frosh experience.

In our day, we still used homosexual connotations to denounce other faculties. The only dissuasion to geting drunk was "we'll mark your face up with marker." Needless to say, that one didn't stop too much drinking. We also competed in a game where the team with the longest line of clothing tied together won. One of my good friends from that week simply recalls a young Chris Hutton standing there in nothing but his t-shirt and his underwear; hanging his head because he was pretty sure his clothes were gone for good. (Sorry about that last visual, folks). Now that I think about it, the nudity may still occur at Frosh...

However, the real reason that I get nostalgic around this time of year, is that I remember how Frosh Week was the start to a new journey in my life. My experience at Waterloo changed everything about me. During my undergraduate degree, I learned about the world on a global scale. I learned how to speak Italian. I learned about neo-conservative economic models and how every consumer choice that I make has an impact on the world around me.

I met a group called the Navigators and they showed me how following Jesus was not just going to church on Sunday; but serving others in need; loving others in need; and not settling for the everyday norm, but working to leave a better world than I'd found.

During my time at Waterloo, I also learned how to devote my life and all my heart to a single individual (now my wife, Michele).

So I guess that when I look around at all these Frosh, I get excited because I know that somewhere amidst the mass of students yelling, "Water, water, water! Loo, loo, loo!", there's probably another "Chris Hutton" taking his first step into a larger world, and what a journey it's gonna be!