Editorial Introduction
Andy Singleterry, Servant Partners Press
Photo by Inaki Del Olmo
On my Stanford application, the writing sample assignment was to include a picture of something important to me and write about why it was so valuable. I chose my bookshelf. I snapped a photo of my collection of science fiction and fantasy volumes and wrote about how I’d learned and grown from “visiting” other planets and universes, from “meeting” other characters. I thought the bookshelf choice showed I was nerdy enough to cut it at Stanford.
Now, twenty-six years later, I’m a little ashamed of that choice. Everybody at Stanford had read J.R.R. Tolkien and Orson Scott Card, so my reading didn’t really distinguish me at all. What’s more, Stanford wants a well-rounded student body, not just a bunch of bookworms. I got in, but I don’t think my writing sample choice helped me.
Ironically, I still introduce myself with my bookshelves. I’ve written here before about how people notice my bookshelves when they enter my house. I want people to think of me as smart and educated, and the shelves are my unspoken evidence. They’ve multiplied and changed over these twenty-six years—now it’s nonfiction, mostly theology, and I keep the sci-fi and fantasy in the garage—but I’m still a bookish nerd.
And that has very little to do with Stanford. Throughout my adulthood, people have been impressed when I tell them I went to Stanford—they think I’m smart and educated, like I want them to. But I always want to point to the shelves and say, “no, that’s why I’m smart, not Stanford!” I was not a good student in college. I did the minimum work and barely graduated. I had worked hard to get into a prestigious college, but once I arrived I couldn’t find the point. I thought some class or professor would light my spark, but nothing did.
Then, right after graduating, I spent a summer doing urban ministry. God called me to this life and, right on time for maximum humbling comedy, reignited my love for learning. Having avoided my assigned reading as much as I could, I regained my appetite when I saw what I was reading for. My real education began when my formal education ended. My living room bookshelves embody my devotion to God’s calling and his rescue of me from aimless academia. I love God with my all my mind because he first loved my mind.
This quarter’s Mural looks at school and education. How does God use our environment to develop us? We hope these pieces help you reflect on how God has, and continues to, educate you.
Andy co-leads the Servant Partners site in San Jose, California and is Editor of SP Press.