Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This October 1973 Classic shows how small-town farm girl, Debbi Payne, navigates her first few weeks at Baylor.
The Baylor University campus might not look awesome to an incoming freshman from Houstion, Dallas or Los Angeles, but to Debbi Payne, a small-town farm girl, it was a radical change from home.
Debbi, of Cranfills Gap, Texas, a community of 300 People admitted, “I was totally lost! There were only eight others in my entire graduating class in high school. I walked into a speech class during summer school at Baylor and saw 23 people. That threw me, but then came fall enrollment and a religion class with 70!”
Coming from a farm family of seven children, typical work includes feeding cows, weeding gardens and sometimes even delivering calves at odd hours of the night. Understandably, her entry into college life might be filled with more than the usual amount of uncertainty.
“I felt very naive during my first week at Baylor. I didn’t know if I was expected to speak or be a good freshman and walk a straight line,” she added.
Homesickness reaches epidemic proportions among freshman students, and Debbi was no exception. She is already wondering how the people of Cranfills Gap will react to her homecoming following the first year in Waco.
Debbi received advice from family members that would sound familiar to most new students and parents as well. “I was told to watch out for all the college men who would promise me the moon. My parents also told me that they trusted me and knew I would be good, but they still call some nights around curfew with different excuses to talk to me!”
Taking sixteen hours, working at the Moody Memorial Library and practicing for the women’s intercollegiate basketball team at least an hour each day keep Debbi too busy to give much thought to the past. Although athletics is her main interest. Debbi plans ultimately to pursue a career in business, dealing with fashion merchandising.
This absorbing interest in physical education, however, provided Debbi with her first introduction to the Baylor environment. Her coach at Cranfills Gap, Baylor Ex J. M. White, Jr., played football for the university before assuming teaching duties in Debbi’s hometown. He encouraged her in track events, often held in Waco, and was instrumental in her winning All- District competition during her senior year.
Debbi feels she expresses the universal problems which concern many freshmen when she mentions eating at 5:30 or 6 every evening and being hungry again by 10 p.m., getting lost in the library, or trying to remember a name while someone she just met waits to be introduced!
She also catches herself mixing up the names of social clubs while trying valiantly to memorize the colors on the jerseys of the various clubs. Also, singing the “Baylor Line” to the giggles of a cafeteria full of upperclassmen has not yet become a thing of the past!
Dating is of prime importance today as it has always been in college life. The boys seem to use many of the same lead-in statements, such as,
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere on campus before?,” “Uh, excuse me, you look like one of my old girlfriends,” or
“Do you want to come to my apartment to study?”
Many girls also have those disastrous blind dates, where the girl dresses up only to meet her date, attired in jeans and a sweatshirt, waiting in the lobby.
Debbi may not be the run-of-the-mill freshman, but she has encountered many of the same experiences and handles many of the same obstacles as other Baylor Students.
Her attitude toward the future includes wanting to develop many friendships. “I want to share my ideas and experiences with others and squeeze as many happy moments as I can into my college years.”
