Life at Lipscomb

Music City: The Concert Guide

As the weather gets cooler, events and activities start to get moved indoors. However, that doesn’t mean the fun has to end. Lipscomb is located in Nashville, sometimes better known as “Music City”. Here are a few concerts you may want to take advantage of throughout the year while you’re at Lipscomb:

Fun

Save the date: February 16, 2013. If you have listened to the radio at all over the past year, then you most likely know who the band Fun. is. Even though a few of their songs such as “We Are Young” and “Some Nights” may be overplayed, this up-and-coming group has exploded onto the scene with hits such as these that have not only been engrained in our brains, but also show the potential for one amazing concert experience.

Trey Songz

R&B hit-maker Trey Songz is bringing his talent to Nashville on December 5^th. Fresh off his newest album release, called Chapter V, Trey Songz is sure to put on a fantastic show for his fans. Get your tickets now, though, because this one is coming up soon.

Maroon 5 with Neon Trees and Owl City

Maroon 5’s nationwide 2013 Overexposed North American Tour is making a stop at Bridgestone Arena on March 24. To top it off, Neon Trees of “Everybody Talks” fame and Owl City are planning to join in for this monster of a concert.

TobyMac

If you happen to be around Nashville during Christmas time, be sure to check out TobyMac’s concert on December 14^th. Throughout his career TobyMac has shown just how popular and successful a Christian music artist can be, and he’s filling up Bridgestone Arena to prove he still has the talent that has attracted such a diverse group of fans over the years.

Taylor Swift & Ed Sheeran

It might be a long way off, but you need to act now if you want to get tickets to this show. Nashville native Taylor Swift partners with “Lego House” singer Ed Sheeran for three consecutive nights in Music City to close out her extensive 2013 Red Tour. September 19, 20, & 21 may seem far away, but these tickets will sell out fast, so plan ahead.

What musical event in the coming year are you most excited for? And if you could have any artist or band come to Nashville, who would it be? Let us know in the comments below!

Great expectations: the college edition

We all come to college with expectations. I came hoping for freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want, and not a soul was going to stop me. Ok, maybe that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but I knew I wanted freedom. I wanted to redefine myself. I needed a fresh start.

Everyone says your college years are the best of your life. I have no doubt this is the truth, but I would like to point out that it is is not going to be perfect from the minute you step foot on campus. There are awkward moments. You have to make new friends, which I’m sure many are like me and haven’t had to make new friends since elementary school. You might have to room with a complete stranger, which is totally out of my comfort zone, but I have learned to enjoy it. Your parents are not there to make you home cooked meals anymore, and you have to do your own laundry. Plus, there is the actual “school” part of college, which is definitely harder than high school. These are all things I did not think about before. I came expecting the best time of my life and wasn't prepared for it to be difficult right away.

Since I have been at Lipscomb, I have learned so much that has helped me overcome the difficult beginning stages of college and am now starting to fulfill my expectations along with getting that fresh start I so dearly desired.

For starters, I have discovered that the awkward moments never go away. You just have to learn to embrace them. When you fall down (or up) the stairs leading to the dining hall, just laugh it off. Remember it happens to literally everyone. I personally have my fair share of awkward moments. Sometimes while walking to class I get my hair stuck in a tree branch. It happens.

There’s also that whole making friends part of college.  Let me just say that if you try to impress people to get friends, you will not be happy. I struggled so much with making friends at first because I was trying to be this really cool, hipster girl and fit in with everyone else on campus. Ha! I’m the farthest thing from hipster. When I started to be myself, I made true friends who I don’t have to put on an act for. Don’t be afraid to be yourself! College is the time where you can be anyone you want to be. This is your chance to have a fresh start.

Finally, I have learned it is time to let go of your high school years. Some people hated high school, and it’s really easy to move on and enjoy the college life. I, on the other hand, really loved high school. I loved my friends and being involved. It was all great. The transition to college life has been hard, but I’ve learned not to be the kid that can’t let high school go. Sure, keep in touch with your friends back home, but make new friends too! Do not spend your first month holed up in your room moping about how much you miss your old life. This gets you nowhere! Embrace the change and enjoy yourself! College is fun, I promise. 

All this to say, I have learned a lot in the few months I’ve been at Lipscomb, and I am so thankful for it. Oh how the times they are a changing, and how wonderful it is to be at such a great place while they do.

Old school, new school and life

There are three things that people say college kids have to learn how to balance- sleep, school, and friends. They forgot one. Netflix. We have basic needs- a computer, a socket, maybe some food and we are good to go. Internet failures are a serious crisis. On Netflix, I just finished an ‘old school’ show about a girl who goes off to college- Felicity. I love it because through half of the show I’m secretly yelling ‘Amen’ in my head. It almost perfectly displays how college life is.

In the episode I just finished she’s leaving to go home after her freshman year. I think about my own freshman year and feel as if the end will never come, but I subconsciously know that it is coming fast. I know that before I even blink twice college will be done. It’s like the fact that I can tell you the exact moment and place when I informed my mother that I was halfway through elementary school… in second grade. I remember so vividly because I thought that six grade was never going to come. Then, I remember freshman year of high school looking at the big and scary seniors… and I never thought that I was going to be that big and scary. College? Seemed like a whole other world that I would never reach. But the reality is that I’m done with second grade, elementary school, senior year of high school and I’m currently sitting in a dorm full of other college girls.

The future is coming fast. Suddenly some things matter that didn’t necessarily matter before. Like the presidential debate. My friends are watching the debate because they want to. They need to. Some hours we talk about candidates, because we think it’s interesting and important, no one is forcing us to discuss it. This time we can vote and it matters. When President Obama and Governor Romney are talking about student loans and jobs and money… it hits me like a ton of bricks. They are talking about me, about us. Politics are no longer something that old people and parents gripe about. Politics are now part of our lives, part of my life.

When thinking about the future my friends and I have the ‘can you believe’ moments a lot. Like, can you believe that in less than four years we will be done with school (hopefully)? Can you believe that we will be living on our own? We will have to have jobs and pay bills? We could be married in less than five years? Will some of us have kids?

I think that it’s these thoughts that make me want to savor every moment in college. I know that no matter how far off life after college seems it will be here before I know it. So, I stay up till three in the morning talking with friends and watching movies… because in less than four years I probably won’t be able to do that. I spend hours in the library studying because I have less than four years to learn everything I need to know. College is the launching pad into life and I feel as if the clock is ticking faster.

Here and Next

I probably couldn’t find better visualization of a “learning community.” Sitting in a garden full of art, the exterior exhibit of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, I’m sure Professor Horton is talking with my Art & Lit in Italia peers about the Yoko Ono Wishing Tree just to the left—i.e. life, enriched. Unenhanced (with the exception that I saturated the colors in the photograph, which also speaks to the wonderment of LU: that a formerly inartistic literature student can by a Global Learning experience be transformed by the renewing of her mind), this is Lipscomb: professors, students and staff communing everywhere under the sun, Tennessee or Tuscan.

“What has been will be again,

     what has been done will be done again;

         there is nothing new under the sun,” -Song of Solomon 1:9

said wise King Solomon, and I believe him painfully. Students will be transformed by Art & Lit in Italia next summer, 2013, and I won’t go. I’ll have had my experience and graduated. Who I have been here at Lipscomb will be again and even better in a newer student; what my professors have taught me will be taught again and to students more interesting. There is nothing new under the sun, not even the moment depicted in this photograph.

So painfully true is it also that “[t]he eye never has enough of seeing”—of seeing contemporary art at the Venice Biennale—“nor the ear its fill of hearing”—of hearing my peers and Professor Horton talk about what’s meaningful (1:8).

What’s meaningful is this Lipscomb learning community, in Nashville, in Italia and in where on earth-and heaven-in-renewal we’re being prepared to go next.