One experience that influenced me was ...
1982 - I could not sleep one night in the dorm and went to the convenience store around 2 a.m. When I went into the store, the clerk was missing. She finally came through a door at the back of the store and was holding her arm, which was bleeding from a stab wound. The clerk called the police and I decided to wait around for the police to show up. I heard sirens and saw red lights coming, so I ran out of the store, but when I held my arms in the air, they thought I was the crook.
The lesson: When it is 2 a.m., go to the Coke machine down the hall and not the convenience store down the street
Ron Morrow ('82)
Arlington, Texas
One experience that influenced me was ...
1983-86 - ...working all night at the Optimist, often two nights a week. Things got pretty weird in the middle of the night. We might go weeks without the auto-dryer working on our typesetter, so we'd be blow-drying out newspaper text at 3 a.m. so we could run it through the wax machine and stick words to the page. Every time we met a press deadline it felt like a little miracle. Classes felt unreal; the real world was in the middle of the night at the newspaper office -- with people racing in office chairs down the halls, wearing parkas to try to stay warm and cutting apart tiny lines of text with Xacto knives to try to make the lines come out even. I've probably never worked so hard in my life, but it was a blast! I have some great memories from ACU and I got a real job as a reporter after my junior year because of my great preparation. That real-world experience made all the difference.
Michelle (Murphy '87) Morris
Abilene, Texas
One experience that influenced me was ...
In the summer of 1979, as a member of His Singers and A Cappella, I had the oportunity to be a part of the choir that traveled to the USSR with Dr. Jack Boyd. At that time, the Cold War was in full swing and traveling behind the "Iron Curtain" was an experience all in itself, but the greatest experience that touched my life, as well as the lives of my fellow brothers and sisters, was being able to worship with Christians in Moscow where it was still against the law to worship Jesus Christ.
We had to walk to a secret place to worship, only walking in groups of no more than three at a time so as to not attract attention to ourselves or where we were going. The most touching moment was meeting this secret group of Christians for worship and having them hug us with tears in their eyes. The rough translation from Russian to English was that they were so happy to see us, as well as to know that there were actually other people that believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.
William Adam ('81)
Shelton, Washington