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Identify Yourselves!
Spotting ORU Honors Students Makes for a Daunting Safari
By Eva-Marie Gooden
..."Anomalies" because each of these members of Dr. Bill Buker's honors seminar on leadership is extremely, exceptionally, outstandingly bright. With ACT scores of 29 or better, SAT rankings of at least 1280, and trailing a minimum 3.45 high school GPA behind them, these young people possess an uncanny capacity to absorb, retain, and assimilate vast amounts of information. And all that braininess wasn't even the only criterion for acceptance into the ORU honors program: These kids have been well-rounded, enthusiastic participants in school, civic and church projects, missions work and more for the majority of their young lives.
...And "unassuming" because, simply put: A surface-level review of this group would do nothing to betray their true identities as super-scholars.
As class members trickled in, I noticed that--like the thousands of other glorious-looking "nonhonors" students on campus--this group sported a sampling of today's most popular hairstyles, from longish, straight-n-glossy brown locks to trendy, bleach-tipped short crops...and that was just the males.
Denim fabric abounded, and the rule there seemed to be: the more frayed and faded, the better.
Despite the crisp November chill, many of the students wore sandals or flip-flops, and one young lady took off her shoes entirely, slipping them back on only for a brief mid-class ladies room respite.
Five of them carried the cherished laptops recently bestowed upon honors fellows through a grant to the university.
Several consumed beverages. Some brought breakfast along; a pretty blonde ate a Pop Tart and one highly organized and apparently rather hygienic gal even fished a plastic baggy-wrapped spoon and a snack pudding from within her belongings. As class got underway, one student led devotions, her language peppered with the "uhms," "likes," and "you knows" characteristic of...well, of your average college coed. With physical appearances, personal habits, and speech patterns all similar to their nonhonors counterparts, where was the hard evidence of major differences setting these exuberant young people apart from...well, from any other exhuberant young person on the ORU campus?
The proof was in the interaction. They asked good questions and were almost obsessively inquisitive, grilling their professor for answers--whereas a less ambitious group might merely have taken lecture notes and sipped their Cokes. Group projects were presented via role-playing, PowerPoints, and a clip from TV's "The Simpsons"... whereas a typical group of college students might have just settled for an oral report. And perhaps most telling for me was when one student used the perfectly correct "regardless," whereas many college students--ORU or otherwise--might erroneously have chosen "irregardless."
The students in the ORU honors program are living, breathing examples of the "can't judge a book by its cover" cliché--only in this case, the cover would feature a pair of baggy, distressed-looking jeans, and the book would be titled something like 1,001 Fun Ways to Employ the Principles of Calculus, Chemistry, and Communication While Serving God, Helping Others, and Making the ORU Campus a Better Place.
