To my student-self… hang out with the CU and the SCM

I started university in 2001. That seems like an impossibly long time ago now, although I regularly believe that I am still 19 years old. I arrived at Edinburgh University not really knowing what to expect, just happy to be in a big city far from home. Before leaving home, I was given all the usual sage advice from well-meaning people in my home church – don’t drink too much, be careful who you make friends with, join the Christian Union.

Freshers Week was fairly uneventful, I went on one massive pub crawl with the other wide-eyed first years of my student hall, but bowed out early and walked home in the persistent Scottish rain while sobbing down the phone to my boyfriend back in Kent. And I went to the Christian Union. I went to many things organised by the CU. I went to my student hall small group (actually, this was one of the best things about my CU experience), as well as “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” (which is true, you could get a sandwich but you were preached at while you ate) and “church search” (for a few weeks at the beginning of the term, representatives from different churches (usually the bigger/cooler ones) in Edinburgh introduced first years to their churches and then offered to escort to them to the service) a. lot. I couldn’t decide where to go to church, as I had been warned that this was the singular most important decision that I was going to make on starting University. (BTW, I didn’t choose well. I went to 3 churches over the 4 years, and in 2 of those 3 churches women were not permitted to preach or hold leadership positions.) I did also go to the Boxing Union’s introductory session, and the Archery Union… and I tried one Drama group too, but they didn’t stick.

I look back on my Freshers Week, and my time at University in general, and I want to tell my student-self this… try out everything, go to everything, talk to everyone. Especially go to the events organised by the weirdest and wackiest Union that there is. And go to the Student Christian Movement events. Or the People and Planet bring-and-shares, or the Speak Network banner-making session. Perhaps if I had done any of those things, I would have met Christians who were trying to figure out issues of justice and faith daily, instead of just one night in the CU calendar. Perhaps I would have met Christians who were passionate about the environment, about human rights, about loving people with different sexual orientations to mine (and not just to try to tell them they were wrong, just because we are all human). I might not have been the only member of the CU Executive Committee to go to the vote on whether our university should become a Fairtrade university or not. I might have been far more involved in political action and campaigning at a time in my life when I had all the time in the world, relatively.

Unfortunately, the Student Christian Movement were portrayed by many in the CU as some kind of liberal, feral group, who sort of believed in Jesus, but not like we did. They shouted about stuff, cared about climate change, they didn’t have a worship band, and they might have had gay people in their Union. Of course, I was young and foolish, I didn’t know then that all those things were good things. But now I do, and I feel like I’m on catch-up.

So, young person heading off to University after the summer – go to the Student Christian Movement. Go to the Christian Union too, because there are beautiful people there, who love Jesus, and will love and nurture you. But go to the Student Christian Movement also, because there are many different kinds of Christian, and many different ways to live out your faith.

Praise be to God that he loves us all.