“Dude, [Anonymous Student] snores like an injured rhino.”
This past week has meant the official end of the honeymoon. Students are coming to grips with the fact that they have over a month and a half left to live with each other, and that (contrary to first impressions) they don’t actually like everyone here.
The guy that leaves his socks on your bed is tolerable, for the first week. By the second week, you are daydreaming about creative ways to get on his nerves. The girl that has that “unique” laugh the first week is the girl with the “annoying” laugh the third week.
And this is precisely why I like summer projects. We get to build into students in a “real-life” environment here in ways that you just can’t simulate anywhere else. Nothing highlights our need for growth like exploding at a roommate because they left their dirty dishes on your beach towel, again.
Pray for this week, as we begin to teach students an option somewhere between fist-fighting and passive-aggressive facebook messages. Resolving conflict (and learning how to resolve conflict) now will literally change the family tree of these students, as they set patterns of Biblical relationships.
If you are wondering where we take students to learn this, Check out Matthew 18:15-20.
Until then, we’ll just keep waking up the rhino, or just go ahead and put it out of it’s misery.