Taking My Place in the Legacy

Choosing my college was about far more than a career

Photo by Harbucks from Getty Images on Canva Pro

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I sat in my freshman psychology class, suddenly under the scrutiny of one of my favorite professors.

“Why did you decide to come to Concordia?”

My answers came in the form of questions, each one sounding less certain than the next.

“Um, I want to be a teacher? My family all went here? I had always wanted to go here?”

“Yes, yes. But why did you want to come here?”

No one had ever challenged my decision to go to the same college that my dad, most of his siblings, and several of his cousins had attended. My family had celebrated that I would be the first one of the next generation to continue the legacy of Barzes attending the college that had trained generations of pastors and Lutheran school teachers to serve in churches and schools across the country. When I made the decision to become a high school English teacher my freshman year of high school, it seemed only natural that I would want to follow in my father’s footsteps and teach at a Lutheran high school somewhere in the country. There were plenty of schools to choose from in nearly every type of city and region. I would be certain to find a job.

Over the next four years, my professor’s question nagged at me. I thought about it as I took the long 600-mile drive to Michigan from Nebraska several times a year. I thought about it when I missed the boyfriend I left behind after every school break. I thought about it when I considered that I could have saved money by attending a public university only an hour from home. How different would my life have been if I had decided to go somewhere else for my undergraduate degree?

I know that Dr. Moulds wasn’t trying to tell me that I didn’t belong or that I had made a foolish decision to go to a small school far away from home. But he was trying to make me think about the decision I had made and consider why I had made it. Had I made my schooling decision for me? Or had I made it because it was what was expected of me?

To be honest, I don’t even know that my parents would be able to answer that question.

The first time I remember visiting Seward, Nebraska was the May before I turned ten. My youngest aunt and her fiance were graduating from Concordia and my parents decided that we were going to attend the graduation. We drove from Illinois to Nebraska and stayed in the recently vacated dorms. My dad couldn’t wait to show us around campus and show us where he had lived and gone to classes when he was a junior and senior in college.¹ Enamored by the pomp and circumstance of the graduation ceremony and swept up in my father’s excitement, I decided that I too would someday attend the same Concordia that my grandfather, father, and several aunts and uncles had attended.

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When We Left the Mountains Behind

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