My Very Own Reality Show

I guess I wanted an experience. I wanted to break out of what had been my monotone existence for the last four or so years, to try something new, conquer a city. So when an editor I knew—he edited a webzine for a large Christian ministry and had published a couple of my pieces—asked if I’d be interested in attending Large Christian Ministry Institute, I gave the idea serious consideration, and then I applied. It would be kind of like going on a reality show, only (hopefully) offering greater chances of career advancement and (hopefully) not as humiliating.

The Institute accepted college juniors and seniors and recent college graduates, with the goal of transforming them into lean, mean, social-change machines—me and 87 other students, only about twenty of whom were guys. We would take classes like Worldview Studies and Family Studies and camp and hike and happily bond in the summer Colorado sun.

First of all, I barely made the cut. I actually—I'm serious—neglected part of the application, so I got wait-listed. And about a month before I had to move, I got the call letting me know I was in.

Second of all, I was a nervous wreck. I didn't really do the college thing the way normal people did, so this would be my first facsimile to the dorm experience. This meant wall-to-wall people all the time (because in my world "wall to wall" is, like, four), most of whom were girls.

It’s not that I didn’t have any female friends. My church small group contained three girls, and we’d taken to hanging out sometimes. But even though we had a reasonably established friendship, the groove wasn’t very deep.

I wanted things to be different at the Institute. I don’t know what I had in mind, exactly, but I wanted a firmer sense of connectivity. I wanted deeper grooves.

The night before I was to arrive at my new apartment with my three new roommates, I thought, I don’t know if I can handle this. I don’t know if I can do this.