Faux Reflections on an Imaginary NSO

New Student Outreaches (i.e., NSO or Week of Welcome) are lingering around the corner for most campuses, and I’m really excited for everyone that gets to participate. I’m a li’l jealous though. I wish I were on campus, waltzing into the sea of students wavering back and forth from place to place. I enjoy being that one person stopping students in their tracks to ask them a question that, you know, could change their life. While other persistent organizations are fanning students with glossy fliers and lavishing them with cheap freebies like unsharpened wooden pencils, here I am with a dainty cup of bubbles to blow and a wrinkly, blank contact card with a dried up pen that hardly writes. But I hold tight to my magical question and fancy interactive wall.

In remembrance of what I love to do, I figured I’d post about NSO as though I’m actively participating in it.

The following entry is not real.

* * *

Monday blues crashed its way into my morning as I woke up with a blistering headache. Through my window, shards of light penetrated into my room as it radiated its powers of heat.

I tried to fight it; so, I stayed in bed for another three snoozes. I say snoozes because time is irrelevant when I’m sleeping. I was so tired that I just wanted to melt into my bed, like butter on warm bread. As I closed my eyes, I rested in my thoughts to help me feel like I was still really sleeping. Unfortunately the only thoughts I could think of were my NSO meetings the week prior.

I hardly call that resting. I glanced at the time and realized I only have twenty minutes at this point to get to campus. “Guess no shower today,” I thought with a lazy grin on my face.

On the way over to campus, my thoughts were bracketed between the possible complications of NSO and the luxury of finishing my day. I imagined my students sitting behind a table, cowering behind fliers and presentation boards as floods of students cheerfully walked on by. Then, I thought about how they may even have forgotten all the fliers and pictures, leaving them with nothing to hide behind except trees. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship: the bare table and open tent, “Hang out in the shade without disturbance, because we’re afraid that our fellow classmates are actually hungry cannibals.”

I eventually reasoned with myself and regained my hope in them, knowing they’re good and faithful students. As I approached the table, my faith completely resurfaced when I saw fliers nicely organized, snacks prepared for free distribution, and lively, smiling student faces. What a bundle of precious sheep, I thought. I wanted to squeeze them all.

But since I’m Asian, I enjoy my space between people and show my affections for them in different forms.

Instead of doing the “The Red Cup” outreach, we decided to make up our own and we called it “Connected,” which was inspired by social networking platforms. For the interactive wall, we decided to take Polaroid shots of people we talked to and a little blurb of what they think community looks like. The wall resembled a mesh between Twitter and Facebook. The idea was to talk about how we enjoy sharing about our lives. Then, we’d discuss how some people use social media as a way of feeling like they’re somehow “connected” to other people’s lives by “liking” statuses, following each others Tweets and whatever else we do on the Internet with our virtual friendships. Finally, we’d talk about how we as humans long for connectedness and what God originally intended, thereby transitioning to the Gospel and discussing how we are connected to God (through the cross).

Throughout the day…

Blah, who am I kidding.

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