So as email introductions were circulating amongst our cohort, one came through from Melissa Gruver proposing if anyone was interested in a roommate. She offered that she would be relocating from Tennessee, but had done research on the ground while in Waco and had a few leads. I replied to her and we set up a phone date to chat. Mel and I got to know each other over the phone and mastermind total efficiency of getting a lease set up while out of state. We chatted about the interview experience and our impressions of Baylor. I told her I didn't meet anyone because of my delayed schedule and she said she didn't recognize the names on email, except for one. She said 'I met Jonathan Manz and he was a pretty cool guy who is also not from Texas so you should get to know him since we will probably hang out when we are all in Waco.' I said ok and sent an email to Jonathan that week explaining that Mel and I were going to room together and she told me to introduce myself.
Oh how I wish I had this initial email conversation, but we used our work emails (Warner and ATO) and no longer have access. What I recall from that first month of emailing was that I learned Jonathan was living in Indianapolis working at his fraternity's headquarters and had been dating a girl there for several months. So of course off the bat, we know this put him in the friend zone and all getting to know each other conversations had no romantic intentions. We learned that we happened to be reading the same book at that time, Donald Miller's "Searching for God know's what." We kept each other abreast of what chapter we were on and processed with each other over email like our own little book club. As it turns out, shared reading was about to become our own love language, stimulating our brains and sparking great conversation. You might see where this is leading since we were about to embark on a 2 year academic journey that involved a lot of reading and discussing.
No comments:
Post a Comment