Kinesiology
After deciding that I was not cut out for majoring in music, I decided to just delay declaring a major. I had started working in the recreation program of a large local church during the second semester of my freshman year. During the summer that I was taking voice lessons from Gerald Claxton, I began working as the youth director of Parkview Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi.
That was the beginning of a 44-year relationship with Dr. Rolfe Dorsey, the pastor of the church I served through the summer of my junior year. Rolfe was my mentor during all those years, and he was largely responsible for many of the leadership principles that I practiced during my career.
During my first two years of college, I took courses in Christian education, speech and drama, and several English classes that were not part of my core curriculum. I took 3 classes that Mrs. P. I. Lipsey taught as she was such a dynamic teacher. She made children’s literature (we called it “Kiddy Lit”) come alive for me. I had the chance to live my college life over again, I would have majored in speech and drama. I just discovered drama too late to declare it a major—and get out of college in four years.
I was working my way through college, and I did not want to delay getting out. I had numerous jobs during college including youth director at the same church for three summers and two years in between those summers; coached YMCA Gra-Y sports teams; and made ice cream at Borden’s (night job); Another big factor was that Cheryl and I decided to get married in the middle of my junior year, so I had to finish in four years.
We were making wedding plans, and at the beginning of my junior year, I had to declare a major and get to work on it so I could finish college. At that time Cheryl and I had already determined that once I finished college, I would enroll in seminary studies. Cheryl was a year ahead of me, so she graduated after we had been married for one semester.
I diligently studied the college catalog looking for the easiest way to finish college—after all, I was going to do graduate studies in Christian education, and it did not matter what I majored in in college. Finally, I found it. I was going to major in Recreation Administration. At that time, a major usually required 30 hours of study in a specific field. I looked at what was included in those 30 hours, and I loved what I saw: 18 hours of course work in the field of recreation administration and the remaining 12 hours could come from a list of courses that would count towards your major. I had already taken 9 hours of courses that were on the list, so that meant that I could take extra loads for the remaining three semesters and finish on time.
Although I have never had the opportunity to use a degree in recreation administration in any of my jobs, I received an excellent education from Mississippi College, and I would not trade my experiences for anything.
A few years ago, I received a letter from the alumni office at Mississippi College to inform me that I had been selected for a Homecoming Award. The Kinesiology Department had selected me to receive their alumnus of the year award. My first question was “What is the Kinesiology Department?” I had to find out how to spell kinesiology before I could look it up with a search engine.
After some investigation into kinesiology in college curriculum, I discovered that the recreation administration degree that I had received was now under the Kinesiology Department.
We traveled to my alma mater to receive the award, and as I stood there receiving that award, this thought went through my mind: two months ago I could not even spell kinesiology, and now I was receiving the Alumnus of the Year award from the Kinesiology Department! That degree was worth something after all.