toccoa falls college (and what’s up)

At the beginning of 2019, I transferred from Tri-County Technical College (which is near Clemson University) to Toccoa Falls College (which is in Georgia). TFC is a four-year, Christian, liberal arts college in Toccoa, Georgia.

I transferred in as a second semester sophomore and am planning to double major in Mass-Media Communications and Biblical Studies. At TFC, every major offered is supplemented with a required minor in Biblical Studies (30 hours), so I’ll only need to add about two classes to get the double major – i.e. two degrees for the price of one.

TFC has an attendance of about 1500 students, so it’s a fairly small school. This creates a really unique atmosphere where everyone kind of knows each other. Campus is not overly fancy or glorious, but it is really nice – it feels friendly. A lot of the groundskeeing is done by students, the parking lot is small and never full, you can get hot tea in the coffee shop for $1, all my professors know me by name – I guess it feels welcoming in a way that my last college didn’t. I love how every Wednesday at 10 a.m. everyone migrates to chapel. No classes are scheduled over this hour, and the college stops to worship together.

My favorite thing about TFC is the people there. At my old school, unless you went to the cafe with someone, you were probably gonna eat alone. People walking past each other across campus didn’t really acknowledge one another. You could sit beside the same people in class for a whole semester and never really talk to them. It’s been really different here, and I’m really thankful for that. On one of my first days, before I knew anyone, some kids came up to me and invited me to eat lunch with them. Since then, I’ve made lots of great friends. Today, five of them drove to our house for Sunday lunch – it was a party. My family got to see who I hang out with, and my friends got my mom’s wonderful food instead of the campus cafe’s.

The smallness of the college also presents some challenges. The communications department has only two full-time professors and is located in the basement of the guys’ dorm building. The professor who will be teaching most of my classes is on sabbatical this semester, this means I had to take all Bible courses this semester and start major-focused classes in the fall.

I commute to school three days a week. A day for me usually looks like this:

—

8 a.m. – Arrive on campus and do homework in the coffee shop…or sleep in.

9 a.m. – Foundations of Spiritual Formation (with Professor Killian)

10 a.m. – Chapel on Wednesdays…discussion group otherwise

11 a.m. – Introduction to Old Testament (with Dr. Turner…my favorite class)

12 a.m. – Eat lunch in the cafeteria

1 p.m. – Introduction to New Testament (with Dr. Herringer)

2 p.m. – Introduction to Theology (with Dr. Vena)

3 p.m. – Come home…or do homework in the coffee shop

—

On Tuesdays, I usually go to a coffee shop called Brews on the Alley. This is my set time to catch up on class reading and homework. They play really good music and have a great tea selection. There’s a kid named Elijah who comes in with his mom on Tuesdays – he sometimes asks me to play chess with him. He’s five years old and incredibly bright.

And on Thursdays I work at Dienner’s Kitchen as a waiter. This is where I make money to buy gas and food and things like that.

And about a month ago, this girl agreed to go out with me. She lets me drive her places in my car and doesn’t get upset when I take wrong turns. She’s pretty cool.

And that is what’s up with me.