For Michael Lambert (17), college didn’t exactly go the way he thought it would.
Applying to Point Loma Nazarene University as a graphic communications major and later switching to undeclared, Lambert wasn’t sure what career path he wanted to take. He only had one thing on his mind when he arrived at PLNU in 2013: soccer.
Although he had been offered a position on UC Irvine’s NCAA Division I soccer team, Lambert’s friends wouldn’t stop raving about PLNU. After taking a tour of the campus during his senior year of high school, he decided to go all-in with Loma, joining PLNU’s Division II men’s soccer team for all four years.
“The stories I’ve heard of players that played in D1 colleges is that it totally runs your life [and] there’s no time for anything else,” Lambert said. “I think that Division II is the right balance, at least for me, of really high achievement and level of play, … and then also being able to have the time to make sure all the other things in your life are in order.”
This flexibility with Division II soccer led to Lambert choosing an unexpected path. After his first semester, he committed to majoring in engineering physics, which he knew would be a challenge.
“[I knew it was] going to push me to learn how to manage time really well, solve hard problems, work in teams,” he said. “Then I [could] have that as kind of a badge of honor.”
Lambert began to find a balance between engineering and soccer. From learning how to manufacture atoms during his summer research to being ranked #7 in the nation as a Division II athlete, he thrived both in the lab and on the field.
Despite his busy schedule, Lambert wanted to get even more involved with PLNU. After his first chapel service, he ran to the person running the sound system and asked how he could get involved.
“That led me down the path of getting involved with the media services,” Lambert said. “It was really tough to do that [around soccer scheduling], but I helped a lot with TimeOut, running audio for that.”
He also got involved with PLNU’s monthly music and coffee event, Musoffee.
“I got to help run a couple of those,” Lambert said. “That was really fun, learning how to run the light board and mess around with all of that. So it was a good creative outlet.”
But the most meaningful moment of his college career didn’t come in the form of a Musoffee, a soccer game, or even when he won an outstanding athlete award. Rather, it was a speaking engagement that had the most impact on him.
Lambert was asked to reflect on his life and what brought him to Point Loma at a gathering of athletes. As he prepared his speech, he realized just how far God had brought him.
“Somebody once described to me that you can either look at [things] as ‘This is just life’ or ‘This is God.’”
“Somebody once described to me that you can either look at [things] as ‘This is just life’ or ‘This is God,’” Lambert said. “When you’re moving forward, there’s all these different branches of ways things can go, and different places they might end up. But when you look backward from where you are, those seemingly random things [are] all connected. It’s very clear how one thing led you to the next, and that it was meant to be that way, but it’s very hard to see that going forward.”
Lambert said that this speaking engagement forced him to look backward, and see how all of the moments in his life were connected. One of the things that God brought together in his life were his friendships. Between Lambert’s classes, accolades and soccer, God brought him to a flourishing community at PLNU.
“I had two teammates that were in the same major, and thus in all the same classes, because they only offer them so often,” he said. “So that helped if we were traveling for something and needed to work. There were some other brains in the room to work on stuff, so that was cool.”
Nine years have passed since Lambert graduated from PLNU. But he still keeps in touch with those two teammates, Nico Tagaloa and Val Doppenberg, and another soccer friend, Steven Velazquez. They were all in his wedding, with Tagaloa by his side as his best man.
“It was a really really tight bond, from being together all the time, and we had very similar senses of humor and interests outside of soccer and things like that,” Lambert said.
Today, Lambert works for AppFolio as the company’s senior software engineer. He attributes some of the skills he has today to the research project he did at PLNU.
“Working as a software engineer, when you’re first getting started, things are pretty well-defined,” Michael said. “But now, being at the more senior level, my job has become … [figuring out] what should we do. … Which goes back to some of that research stuff of, investigating, hypothesizing, building proofs of concepts and testing.”
More than anything, Lambert values connections; both the ones he’s made at work and through Point Loma. Lambert and his wife recently moved to San Luis Obispo, where they just welcomed their first child. As they continue to find community there, Lambert hopes that one day he’ll be able to return to PLNU to reconnect with more alums.
“I’m always looking to stay connected,” he said.
