{"id":4644,"date":"2021-07-14T02:34:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T02:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4644"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:40","slug":"ball-state-freshman-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4644","title":{"rendered":"BALL STATE FRESHMAN TO BE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hard to believe that Caleb is going to be a junior at Wabash College in a few weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harder to believe that Hannah will be a Sophomore at Olivet Nazarene University.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hardest to believe that Samuel will be a freshman at Ball State University.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today was one of those bittersweet days as a parent &#8211; Samuel&#8217;s orientation at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana. This is our family&#8217;s third year in a row to push a kid out of the nest. Each time it feels so very wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so very right.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Neither Melissa nor I (not to mention Samuel, for that matter) have spent much time on Ball State&#8217;s campus before this point, so it was excellent to see what&#8217;s there and to get a glimpse of all the opportunities that lie before Samuel beginning next month.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is a beautiful campus and the day&#8217;s activities were well-organized and informative &#8211; all very reassuring for us parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Samuel seemed to feel very much at home and left campus with his first semester schedule in hand and a burning desire to get started.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fortunately (for us), we still have him at home for another five weeks or so.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All the same, it&#8217;s &#8220;official&#8221; now and we feel it &#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/20210713_165610_HDR-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1440\" height=\"1079\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/20210713_165656_HDR-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1440\" height=\"1080\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/20210713_170143_HDR-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1079\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hard to believe that Caleb is going to be a junior at Wabash College in a few weeks. Harder to believe that Hannah will be a Sophomore at Olivet Nazarene University. Hardest to believe that Samuel will be a freshman at Ball State University. Today was one of those bittersweet days as a parent &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4649,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644\/revisions\/4649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}