Pensacola Christian College

I had grown up in a fundamentalist home and attended the same type of Christian day school my entire life with little problem, so I expected to easily transition into the PCC environment. I was wrong.

By far, the years spent at PCC were the most tumultuous, humiliating, ridiculous years of my life. I had many experiences I could relay. Here are just a sprinkling of the same examples that have been posted that I personally experienced: One Saturday morning, the Asst. Dean of Women came to my dorm room and asked me to call home. While I cried on the phone as my parents told me that my grandmother had just passed away, the mature and more Christian Asst. Dean of Women used the opportunity to do a room check. As I cried, she was perusing my dorm room telling my roomates to take down the Nerf basketball hoop that was hanging on the window by those little suction cups, etc. Touching and compassionate, huh? Here's another: I was inexperienced with the sun on the white beaches and during a cold, blustery Saturday afternoon I ended up with a scorching sun burn. My skin was swollen tight and blistered. Death sounded inviting. The next morning, I got in the shower to get ready for church and I passed out. My roomates helped me out of the shower. I then realized that I had 2 choices: go to the health center and receive a large sum of demerits for missing church or go to church. Being the submissive sort that I was, I put pantyhose on over the 2nd degree sunburn and managed to get my body into the church sanctuary. Oh, here's another fun one: One evening, as I walked to mandatory dinner amongst a large group of people, I was stopped by a female floor leader who informed me that she had to write me up for having an inappropriate slit in the back of my skirt. I was wearing a long straight skirt that buttoned all the way up the back. I was puzzled and did feet a bit of a draft, so I reached back only to realize that the skirt was completely unbuttoned up to my derriere. All I could figure is that it must have come unbuttoned as I lounged in my dorm room prior to going to dinner. As if total humiliation wasn't enough, this was my first experience with demerits in college.

At Christmas break during my junior year, I did eventually bring on WW III in my family and put my foot down that I would not return to PCC. Sometime later I had regrouped, worked awhile to save money to pay for school and determined what I wanted to do with my life. I applied at the local community college, which would eventually accept my unacredited hours, if I would take 1 year of community college courses to prove myself a worthy student first. I jumped at their offer. (Keep in mind that community colleges typically offer up to 2 years of college classes. I had already surpassed this amount of hours at PCC, but I was just grateful to move on and hopefully have some use for all the hours I had survived at PCC.)

While I have moved on in some ways, I won't forget the cruel and unusual experiences I had while a student at PCC. In most circumstances, I am a bit of a skeptic, but I have no problem believing every last terrible story that is posted on this site and the Student Voice site. There are times when I think I'll never be the same.

In an ironic way, I have seen that every act has an equal and opposite reaction. Those years spent suffering in a passive "turn the other cheek" state have not been beneficial to me or PCC in the long run. I have not been passive when denouncing the spiritual-social system that PCC and other churches and colleges are structured around.

In retrospect, I can understand why my parents pushed it so hard: they could send their college age child to a place that would enforce stricter rules than their own home. Their child would not be able to make any mistakes because their child had no right to make any of her own decisions. Their child would not be risk to fall to the ravages of the world because she would not be exposed to the world. My advice? If you want a real education, where administration is not just obsessed about petty things such as hemlines and haircuts, then this place isn't for you. More advice? You get what you pay for and nothing is really free - -there are strings attached to anything you think you are getting cheaply or for free. If you are a 17 year old thinking about college, and your parents are trying to force you to a place like this because they are paying, and therefore this is the will of God, my best advice to you is to throw out the adage: "He who pays, says". Work at McDonald's if you have to to make your own way. And don't be afraid to lay it out to your parents. If they are worth anything as parents, they will respect you enough as a person to help you instead of hinder you.