Finding My Way Home - A Christian Testimony

I graduated from high school in June 1966, and at that time, my life to many would have probably appeared normal, even though nothing about it or me had been. In fact, a couple of the more significant things about my earlier attitude and predicament had actually remained the same.

For example, by graduation day, I still had not demonstrated any special or unique intelligence. Out of eight hundred students in my high school graduating class, my ordinal ranking was approximately five hundred and fifty. I had finished in the lower third of my class, meaning that in five years of junior high and high school, I had gone from promise to disaster, from being in the top eight of the whole class as an Eighth Grader to being in the lower one-third as a Twelfth Grader. That was quite a decline!

In addition to still being on a downward track academically, I was also still on the wrong road spiritually. Nothing had changed in that regard, either! My extremist nature was still taking me much farther than I really wanted to go, and I was still bordering on far too much involvement in mischievous activities. Thus, as I prepared for college, I really did not stand much chance. With past performance as the most reliable and most realistic predictor of future performance, my college plans were almost doomed to failure from the start!

The application process put everything into perspective. At least, it should have! Applying to various schools should have given me, as well as those around me, the opportunity to see myself as others were seeing me. I applied to three different institutions and received different responses from each.

The first, the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, turned me down outright. They did not seem interested in wasting their time with someone like me who had already compiled such a terrible academic record. I also applied to Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Virginia, where I was accepted, but only on the condition that I would study Solid Geometry during the Summer session. Because I did not want to spend my last summer of "freedom" in school, though, I turned down their offer, making that a decision which spoke volumes about my real interest in education!

Finally, my hopes for higher learning came down to the third school, which was Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. There, I was accepted without restriction. The school did not seem to be bothered by my poor grades or by my low class standing, plus they were not asking me to give up my summer to take preparatory courses. Therefore, the decision for me was a "no-brainer"! I made ODU my school of choice.

Had anyone been watching during that episode with the above three schools, it would have been clear that I did not belong in college. I had not studied in junior high or high school, and I had amassed the grades to prove it! Over five hundred and fifty students out of eight hundred high schoolers had graduated ahead of me, and even though I had graduated, I still had not measured up to my original potential. During my critical learning years, between the Eighth and Twelfth Grades, I had been more interested in chasing my own selfish, foolish desires and in trying to make myself the center of attention than in trying to develop myself intellectually. Thus, when all was said and done, I did not have anything to show for that wasted, empty pursuit, except a very low Grade Point Average and an early history of disappointment and failure.

My school records were pitiful, even pathetic, but doing poorly academically, as I have maintained from the start, was not my worst shortcoming! After all of those years in and out of school, my greatest problem was that I still had not gotten any closer to learning the truth about the Lord. Worse than that was that I still did not wish to know more! I indicated in Chapter Two that no warning signs had existed to suggest the coming difficulties in my life. Actually, that was not entirely accurate! The signs had been there, and they had been clear! But most people, including I, had not recognized them because they were of a spiritual nature.

Therefore, with a bad attitude and with very little hope for success, I left home to attend the college which had originally been my third choice, convinced that I could fool the administrators at ODU just as I had once fooled those at George Wythe Junior High and Hampton High School. In September 1966, I thought that I could outsmart the system, but as I would soon learn, no one is that intelligent, not even me!

Away from home and in a college dormitory environment, everything was much different! There, of course, were many more people and activities to compete for my time, and most of those activities, by default alone, seemed to keep me from the books. Almost every evening, I would go out somewhere with others just to fool around. We would sometimes go to a school dance because they seemed to be fairly frequent and were usually free! Other times, we would hang out in the school's Student Center or our dormitory lounge where we could talk. During those years, ODU had a very good basketball team, so sometimes, we would go to the school gym and watch the team scrimmage. Frequently, we would just go to the neighborhood pizza parlor and grab some food. Life for me away from home, in a college dormitory setting, kept me continually on the go, but unfortunately, most of that going had nothing to do with the pursuit of a higher education.

Just as in high school, I quickly resorted to my old ways of studying little and playing much. Even though the people and situation were different, I again found myself obsessed with being the center of attention. This time, though, instead of trying to be a class clown or a highway daredevil, I had settled for being the dorm clown. Within that dormitory environment, I used every opportunity to gain attention and get a laugh. As a result, my study habits for those initial months were pretty bad, but that was all right because I was too cool to be bothered by either an undisciplined study regimen or by any potentially bad consequences. Besides, despite my unscholarly behavior, I had still completed the first half of the first semester in reasonably good shape.

I had signed up for five courses, totaling thirteen semester hours. By Thanksgiving, which happened to be midterm for the opening session, my grades, even though I had rarely cracked a book, were still three "B"s, one "C", and one "P," and I was very happy with that early academic success. The "P", for Passing, had been in Physical Education. However, while my grades were not too bad, one thing about my status at ODU was messed up, and I thought that that thing could be a problem down the road.

In looking over my midterm grading report, I discovered that the name on my report, which obviously should have been my own, was not. It had somehow been misrepresented, first by showing my middle initial as an "L" when it should have been a "T", and second by not indicating that I was a Junior. Because of those two mistakes, my records were listed under the name "James L. Lee" when they should have been under "James T. Lee, Jr." To have the matter resolved, I went straight to the Administration Office on the Monday following Thanksgiving and filled out the appropriate forms to have my records corrected. After all, with three "B"s, one "C", and a "P", I certainly wanted to get their records straight so that I could get all the credit that I deserved.

I completed the necessary form and returned to the dorm to get myself back into what I considered to be "school" mode, but from that moment on, things for me would begin to quickly fall apart! In fact, the success, good fortune, or just plain luck which I had enjoyed during those initial weeks would not last much longer, and my foolish behavior, that of playing hard and never studying, would soon be catching up with me! Despite having made decent midterm grades, I had not put forth much effort, and something was about to give! My grades were good enough, so outwardly, everything appeared to be all right. But beneath the surface, I was bordering on real trouble! By choosing the pleasure and popularity route over academics, I had fooled around too much at night and missed too many classes during the day. Because of my erratic, haphazard class attendance, I was nearing the school's limit for class absences.

Old Dominion permitted an individual to miss twenty percent of his or her classes, or nine out of forty-five classes per semester for each course. This, even in my mind, was a very liberal standard, but I was not close to meeting it! I was only halfway through the first semester, yet I had already accumulated seven or eight cuts in most classes. Therefore, the moment of truth was finally approaching, and unfortunately, I would not be up to the challenge!

What a pathetic person I had become! My grades halfway through the first semester had been pretty good. With even a small measure of good judgment, common sense and earnest effort, I could have saved the semester. I probably would have missed some of the parties, but then, I also would have probably ended the semester on a positive note with decent grades. After considering those options, making a decision to work harder and be more responsible would have been wise, but of course, I did not make that choice! Instead, I elected to take the more pleasurable path. I continued going to parties, I continued missing all or most of my classes, and in general, I continued to not care about the potential for negative consequences. The result was that my reasonably good first semester went down the tubes, and in the end, I was left with nothing to show for my time and parent's money except the fruits of an irresponsible, playboy-style semester away from home. Yet, I had no one to blame for my fall but myself!

As the semester came to a close, I could see that I was about to be held accountable for my actions, a phenomenon which would be happening to me for the first time in many years or perhaps even for the first time in my entire life. In other words, when the first semester ended, my good grades were ended, too, and this time, no one would be trying to sugarcoat or smooth over the outcome. My best grade turned out to be only a "C", and that had been in the one semester hour Physical Education class. From there, everything else went downhill. In Algebra, I had gone from a "B" at midterm to a "D". In my other three courses, Chemistry, English, and History, I had gone from two "B"s and a "C" at midterm to three "F"s. All my grades had been lowered because of too many class cuts! In fact, even though my Algebra professor did not fail me, he had lowered my grade from a "B" to a "D" simply because of excessive absences. My Grade Point Average at the Thanksgiving midterm break had been a respectable 2.692 - not bad for a first semester freshman! But by the end of the semester, it had fallen to a very dismal 0.385. To go along with those poor marks, I was also placed on academic probation!

As I looked at my grades in stunned disbelief, I realized that my transition from passing to failing had actually happened very quickly. In less than five weeks, my grade in each class had gone from decent and respectable to terrible! Yet, despite that seemingly serious setback, my downward progression still had not reached bottom. For me, things would get even worse before they could ever hope to become any better.