Our Omer of Manna: Part IV

We left off having just moved to Shawnee after a job loss in Waco and a summer of living with friends in DFW while Jonathan began his prerequisites.  I was living alone as the RD in Kerr (after spending all of my graduate school years swearing I would never work in ResLife) on the OBU campus, and still reeling from all the changes of the last six months.  

Soon enough, my staff of new resident advisors arrived and reminded me that regardless of the job description, I would be doing what I loved: working with college students.  Once Jonathan arrived on campus a few days later, everything felt right.  After nearly a year of stress, life suddenly felt very simple, and in a strange way we both realized that God brought us back to OBU to bring us home, to bring us to a familiar place where we could learn to breathe again.

I literally walked down a hall to my office, and Jonathan walked across The Oval to class each day.  We met in the ARA for lunch and enjoyed all of the sweet traditions on campus that we had loved as students.  We were surrounded by community and a short drive from family.  Aside from the demands of Jonathan's prerequisite courses (And, boy, were they demanding!) and my job (Ever managed a building full of college women?  It can get interesting!), life was very sweet.

Jonathan had an opportunity to work at an optometry practice in the city that was owned by some family friends.  Each Friday, he would drive to the city to shadow the doctors and learn the ropes.  The plan was that Jonathan would spend one year finishing prerequisites and gaining experience, and spend the next year studying for and taking the OAT exam, completing the admissions packets, and interviewing at different schools.

The practice where Jonathan shadowed is well connected with the Oklahoma board of optometrists and the administration of Oklahoma's optometry school in Tahlequah.  They encouraged Jonathan to go ahead and apply that year, just to get his name in the mix and build familiarity so that he would be a shoe-in for the next year.  Just after being given this advice, we visited the Tahlequah campus and the head of admissions gave him the same advice, but with a twist: he wanted him to take the OAT in two weeks, which would give him a chance to take the exam twice before the admissions deadline.

At this point, Jonathan had only had about one month of Organic Chemistry and hadn't even taken biology, microbiology, and several other courses that were on the OAT.  To take the OAT successfully at that point was a long-shot, but Jonathan felt that he needed to follow their advice.  He crammed on those subjects over the next two weeks, basically teaching himself the courses that he had yet to take, and hoped for the best.

When he took the exam, he had no idea that he would be given his score before leaving the testing center.  He clicked "Submit" after the final question, and much to his shock, his score popped up on the screen.  This was the beginning of God blowing our minds in every step of this process.

He had passed, scoring twenty points higher than what he needed to get an interview at any optometry school.  Now, Jonathan is a smart guy, but he will be the first to tell you that this score had nothing to do with him and everything to do with God.

We were thrilled to be able to at least get Jonathan's name in the mix for that year's application process.  Knowing full well that he would not be admitted since he would not have completed his prerequisites until the end of that next summer, we looked forward to visiting a few campuses for interviews and scoping out where we might be headed in two years.