Dr. Laura (Cleek) Phillips and Dr. Mark Phillips at a Galaxy Spring Formal
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that the person teaching your class was once a student like you are today. But, it’s true. Whether they are ACU alumni or received their degree from another institution, our faculty and staff have walked much the same paths that our current students tread. They’ve worried about midterms, finals, and dating. They’ve complained about curfews, Bean food and chapel credit. We thought it would be fun to highlight and share some of their memories of college life over the next few weeks. This week our blog features Dr. Laura Phillips (’88). She and her husband, Dr. Mark Phillips (’88), typically teach on our campus during the school year, will be teaching business classes this fall in our Study Abroad program in Leipzig, Germany. We hope you enjoy this walk down memory lane and the pictures that they shared with us.
p.s. I think I (M.C.) was one of the freshman involved in the colored water gun Capture the Flag game mentioned below…I remember being very pink, red, and blue afterward and have a picture somewhere that proves it. Thank you, Laura Phillips, for a fun memory. And sorry you had to bleach the steps of the Ad Building.
What was your best memory from college?
That’s a hard question. Some of my more memorable experiences include:
- The time I planned a campus-wide party in Bennett Gym featuring student bands, Southern food,
and casino tables. To decorate I hung metallic streamers from the ceiling by attaching them to helium balloons. It looked super cool. We had some trouble with power outages throughout the evening. I attributed them to the bands overtaxing the very old Bennett electrical systems. We learned, when the police arrived at the party, that the outages were actually caused by the balloons slipping through the open windows near the ceiling and shorting power lines all around the north side of Abilene. Apparently, we knocked out the computers on campus, the traffic lights in the area, and who knows what else. Oops. - The time I planned a Capture the Flag game for Welcome Week that used water guns and colored
Mark and Laura at Galaxy Grub
water. Each team had its own color. I used a LOT of dye to make sure that you could see the evidence when someone got shot. Unfortunately, the dye was so strong that it colored the front of the Ad Building as well as the steps, meaning that I spent a few hours after the game bleaching the front of the Ad Building and the steps. Oops.
- The time I planned a HUGE pizza party in the double gym for all of the Sing Song participants. I ordered the pizza from the Bean because it normally was pretty good. In this case, it was truly terrible and the students responded by using it in a gym-wide food fight. Fortunately, the gym floors were covered with brown paper so no actual damage was done. The pizza was so bad that the Bean actually acknowledged its pathetic-ness and provided snow cones for everyone on campus later that semester.
What is your best advice for college students?
You have your whole life to be an adult and you can have many different careers. Don’t rush through
everything. Take time to do memorable things. Share experiences with the people around you. Do something weird. Definitely do what you need to do to get a job but don’t worry so much about starting out in the perfect job.
What do you wish you could tell your college self today?
I would tell my college self the very things I listed in #2.