Uneasy about going away to college

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redbetta

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I am 17 and trying to learn the faith and I worry about the difficulties that I will encounter when I go to college. I am already a minority in belief in my Catholic all girls school although I have never been insulted because I am not social and nobody knows where I stand on any issue. However, I am worried that things will be much different in college since I will be living there and there is no way that my roommate will not know what religion I practice. I am also worried that some of my professors might hate me if they detect even a subtle sign of ideological dissent or if I make a conscientious objection do something done in class since I plan on doing something along the lines of biology or medicine. Am I likely also to encounter people who like to throw objections at Christians and watch them try to respond like a hobby?

Pardon if I sound paranoid, I just see some of the difficulties that people post about here and I get anxious. If anyone encountered any of these scenarios or something of the sort, could you tell me how you dealt with it or some advice on how to deal with it? I would appreciate it. Thanks.
 
You would probably be surprised by the number of good science professors that ARE Christian and won’t attack you for being one. It’s a higher number than most think.

Also, remember that you aren’t in college forever. Plus, that social environment changes every few MONTHS. You are free to voice dissent and (politely) debate when a professor or fellow student says something disparaging because in the end you only have to deal with them for a few months or at the most a few years. Each new semester brings new opportunities. This makes it much easier to put yourself out there and be vocal.

I had a professor that made some ridiculous comments about Catholics. I called her out on it. Was it a little scary? Yeah, but I look back on it and I’m pretty proud of it. It feels good to know I did the right thing. Also, after that semester I never saw her again so frankly I don’t give a rat’s behind what she thought of me. Defending your faith is not a cakewalk, but it is worth it. College is one of the best places to jump in there and get some practice with debating people that disagree with you.

As for dorms and things, lots of people have nightmare roommate stories that seemed horrible at the time but then they laugh about it later. Sometimes the roommates that are the least like you turn out to be the best roommates so don’t get too caught up with first impressions. Your roommate doesn’t have to be your best friend, you just need to get along fairly well. If you don’t get along well for one reason or another, you can always move to a different dorm that next semester and just tell the roommate you wanted a dorm closer to a certain building or it had better prices or something.
 
Redbetta: I’m going off to college in June as well. I’m nervous about it, but not for the same reasons as you. I’ve been going to a public school with a pretty substantial amount of atheists, so I’ve had my times of being questioned on my faith. The truth is that it’s nothing to be afraid of if you do your research and are prepared for it. The Bible said we’d be persecuted for our beliefs, but blessed because of it 👍
 
Professors are, as a rule, oddballs. You will have ones that you might ideologically agree with and yet you can’t stand them. You will have ones that you disagree with wholeheartedly and yet you kinda like them. But, in general, you probably won’t understand them because, again, they’re pretty unusual. Some will talk way too much about themselves, some are strictly business in a way that seems almost inhuman and robotic. Don’t take it too seriously and just realize that you only need to be with them for 1 semester at a time.

You will find professors that you like. When you do, you can choose to take classes with them again and you can avoid the ones that you don’t like.

Most professors aren’t going to be talking about their ideologies or religions in your science classes. Really, that’s true in most classes beyond science as well.

If you are going to be studying science as you suggest then generally you should realize that there’s not much time or even much purpose in discussing creation, and as long as you are in agreement with modern science on most matters and don’t understand evolution to be contradictory to the faith (just as most Western Catholics don’t) then you should be fine.

Don’t worry about roommates too much. There are lots of roommates that are worse to have than a practicing Catholic. Just be aware that your roommates are probably going to be making different decisions than you and recognize that it’s not your role to parent them. If you’re all up in people’s business (e.g. complaining every time someone’s boyfriend visits or chastising someone for drinking away from the dormroom), then yeah that’s going to be irritating. Just don’t do that. As long as you’re respectful to your roommates, they will most likely be respectful to you.

Seek out Catholics for fellowship. If (for whatever reason) there aren’t many or any, find friendship and fellowship with non-Catholics that have similar enough basic values. You should be able to find people that don’t do drugs and aren’t promiscuous, etc. because they’re involved in other activities.
 
I work at a university that is supposed to be Christian (Methodist), but is dominated by atheists. Keep learning your faith, don’t let yourself be led down some path of stupidity by a cool-sounding prof or fellow student. Do your best to find fellow faithful Catholics; they are actually to be found even on my campus.😛 That gives you some backup.
If you find yourself in a class where you must show the obligatory politically correct attitude, then vomit it back to them as they wish, using the opportunity to formulate your own, well-thought-out train of thought. Be forewarned that classes in philosophy, religious studies or even Christianity may be anti-Christian in at least some forms. Don’t be scared, learn to be innocent as a dove and wise as a serpent.:cool:
The coming generation of Catholics will need to be warriors for the Lord. :knight2::knight1:
Viva Christo Rey
I know this sounds a bit grim, but you can still get a good education and have fun, honest.👍
 
Thanks, for all the replies. I guess I have just become paranoid after being disillusioned with my supposedly Catholic high school and reading some of the difficulties that other posters had. So the moral is to be prepared and find a fellow Catholic on campus. It is a little difficult to find people since I am socially incompetent and it is pretty much me and my immediate family. Does it just happen? On the other hand, I am not easily swayed by others so it is not like I would become a completely different person after one year at college. Also, a little off topic, I want to be prepared but I procrastinate on everything. If anyone had that getting in the way of his or her research on the faith, that kind of advice would help to. Thanks again.
 
redbetta said:
I am 17 and trying to learn the faith and I worry about the difficulties that I will encounter when I go to college. I am already a minority in belief in my Catholic all girls school although I have never been insulted because I am not social and nobody knows where I stand on any issue. However, I am worried that things will be much different in college since I will be living there and there is no way that my roommate will not know what religion I practice. I am also worried that some of my professors might hate me if they detect even a subtle sign of ideological dissent or if I make a conscientious objection do something done in class since I plan on doing something along the lines of biology or medicine. Am I likely also to encounter people who like to throw objections at Christians and watch them try to respond like a hobby?

Pardon if I sound paranoid, I just see some of the difficulties that people post about here and I get anxious. If anyone encountered any of these scenarios or something of the sort, could you tell me how you dealt with it or some advice on how to deal with it? I would appreciate it. Thanks.
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Praying for you.
 
redbetta said:
Thanks, for all the replies. I guess I have just become paranoid after being disillusioned with my supposedly Catholic high school and reading some of the difficulties that other posters had. So the moral is to be prepared and find a fellow Catholic on campus. It is a little difficult to find people since I am socially incompetent and it is pretty much me and my immediate family. Does it just happen? On the other hand, I am not easily swayed by others so it is not like I would become a completely different person after one year at college. Also, a little off topic, I want to be prepared but I procrastinate on everything. If anyone had that getting in the way of his or her research on the faith, that kind of advice would help to. Thanks again.
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Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) is good if there is one on your campus. Some other organizations are faithful and some aren’t. Here is a chance to learn how to do due diligence! Don’t feel bad about feeling socially incompetent; I haven’t met you and know there are lots worse. Folks of a similar mind usually find each other, anyway especially at a college where everyone is somewhat unfamiliar. Research? CAF of course!:compcoff:
 
Don’t be intimidated by people.

You will meet all sorts: geeks, party animals, wild feminists, atheists, maybe some religious types too 😉

Find out where Catholics meet and join the community. Find other Christians too if needed. Make friends with these people and be careful about others because peer pressure is tough.

You said in the first post that there will be no way that your roommate does not know your religion. Are you shy to mention religion at all? I used to be very shy about it and avoided mentioning it as much as I could. What happened was that I ended up hiding it from people, because with time it became more and more difficult for me to open up about it. I don’t think it is necessary to talk to everyone about it all the time, but don’t be afraid to say to your new friends that you are religious, even if they are not.

If you ever feel that you are the only one who goes to church, that is probably not true. I have found that many students are intimidated to bring up their religion, just like I was. I found Christians at my department after I got to know people a bit better, despite thinking I was the only one at first.

You’ll be fine. 👍
 
Have you considered going to a Catholic college? Not everyone at my college was Catholic, but plenty were and a pretty good number of students went to Mass too. It was very easy to make like-minded friends, and a lot of the professors were Catholic as well.

Our freshman and sophomore dorms were single-sex, and there were visiting hours where you had to sign in if you wanted to visit someone in an opposite-sex dorm. It cut down on a lot of potentially uncomfortable roommate situations.

I am not saying you don’t need to learn how to get along with people of no or different faiths, just that sometimes when your faith is rather under-developed and especially if you are afraid to even tell people you’re Catholic, you might benefit from a few more years where you’re surrounded by the faith and people who practice it.
 
redbetta said:
I am 17 and trying to learn the faith and I worry about the difficulties that I will encounter when I go to college. I am already a minority in belief in my Catholic all girls school although I have never been insulted because I am not social and nobody knows where I stand on any issue. However, I am worried that things will be much different in college since I will be living there and there is no way that my roommate will not know what religion I practice. I am also worried that some of my professors might hate me if they detect even a subtle sign of ideological dissent or if I make a conscientious objection do something done in class since I plan on doing something along the lines of biology or medicine. Am I likely also to encounter people who like to throw objections at Christians and watch them try to respond like a hobby?

Pardon if I sound paranoid, I just see some of the difficulties that people post about here and I get anxious. If anyone encountered any of these scenarios or something of the sort, could you tell me how you dealt with it or some advice on how to deal with it? I would appreciate it. Thanks.
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Immediately get involved with the local Catholic campus ministry is what I suggest.
 
redbetta said:

“I am already a minority in belief in my Catholic all girls school although I have never been insulted because I am not social and nobody knows where I stand on any issue.”

College is very different from high school because the social pool is much bigger, and you have much better odds of meeting and spending time with kindred spirits if you make an effort to join different groups and put yourself out there. At orientation, there will probably be some sort of activity fair–if you try a bunch of stuff, you’ll find something you like.

“However, I am worried that things will be much different in college since I will be living there and there is no way that my roommate will not know what religion I practice.”

Don’t worry about it. Just be a good, thoughtful roommate, be friendly, clean up after yourself, don’t be home all the time, and so forth. Also, these days you have a good chance of being able to communicate with your roommate before you actually move in, so take advantage of that and look for common ground.

The trickiest thing is how to handle roommates bringing home boyfriends or random guys for sleepovers. You may need to talk about this in advance (or after the first time it comes up). A possible solution is that you will be gone at certain regularly scheduled evenings, but just as a matter of personal safety and fairness, you expect to be able to sleep in your own dorm without some strange guy being there. If you wanted to room with guys, you would have made arrangements to do so.

If anything else comes up, don’t hesitate to talk to your resident advisor. That’s what they are there for.

“I am also worried that some of my professors might hate me if they detect even a subtle sign of ideological dissent or if I make a conscientious objection do something done in class since I plan on doing something along the lines of biology or medicine. Am I likely also to encounter people who like to throw objections at Christians and watch them try to respond like a hobby?”

A few. College is a big pool with lots of fish in it–you can generally swim away from the less congenial ones. Also, the rate-my-professor sites may be helpful for avoiding this sort of situation.

Don’t go looking for trouble.
 
angelic06 said:
Immediately get involved with the local Catholic campus ministry is what I suggest.
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This. Find a local Newman Center, or equivalent. In my experience they usually are orthodox, if not as universally activist as, say, FOCUS. You might meet some…erm… dissenters there, but usually not the priests. But the vast majority will likely be like minded.

And another thing, which should be obvious, but bears saying: GO TO MASS. A lot of kinds unfortunately fall away from the faith when they find too many bad excuses to avoid Mass.

Also, in my experience, while many or even most professors do not practice a religion, most are pretty tolerant of religious students, and often appreciate in many cases the unique perspective they bring (though my major involved a lot of political philosophy, but still, most professors are not personally hostile to traditionally religious students). More likely, the most anti-Catholic people you are likely to meet on campus are fellow students. That was the way it was for me.

If you are going to be in a dorm, usually they have rules against being behind closed doors with the opposite sex, even in co-ed dorms (partly as a way to reduce the risk of what is generally known as sexual assault, among other things). Bring your concerns to the RA if it is an issue, because even atheists generally object to being ‘sexiled’ from their own room. With apartments, it might be a bit more difficult, as you and your roommate have separate bedrooms, but I always treated it as if a neighbor was engaging in such behavior. Things might be different if you are close friends, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, no?

All in all, remember to keep good company, go to Mass, go to confession regularly, and you should be fine.
 
It saddens me that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable bigotry for liberals in academia. If some prof mocks your religion, take it up with his/her department head and/or the academic dean. Academic freedom is not academic license. Nonetheless, you may find the worse problem is the aggressive stance of many fundamentalist students who may see you as a soul to be saved from the “whore of Babylon” who has corrupted true Christianity by adopting pagan and other anti-biblical practices and beliefs.

The only answer is to be active in the Newman Society and to attend Mass on campus to connect to faculty and students who can offer support and good counsel. I have found that having a copy of Karl Keating’s book on apologetics Catholicism and Fundamentalism has helped some of my students respond to the arguments of these well-meaning but very misinformed students.

Some other good resources: the magazine First Things, The Intercollegiate Institute which publishes a nice free journal, and the National Association of Scholars which publishes Academic Questions which takes on the ideological corruption of higher education.
 
redbetta said:
I am 17 and trying to learn the faith and I worry about the difficulties that I will encounter when I go to college. I am already a minority in belief in my Catholic all girls school although I have never been insulted because I am not social and nobody knows where I stand on any issue. However, I am worried that things will be much different in college since I will be living there and there is no way that my roommate will not know what religion I practice. I am also worried that some of my professors might hate me if they detect even a subtle sign of ideological dissent or if I make a conscientious objection do something done in class since I plan on doing something along the lines of biology or medicine. Am I likely also to encounter people who like to throw objections at Christians and watch them try to respond like a hobby?

Pardon if I sound paranoid, I just see some of the difficulties that people post about here and I get anxious. If anyone encountered any of these scenarios or something of the sort, could you tell me how you dealt with it or some advice on how to deal with it? I would appreciate it. Thanks.
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Well most people generaly don’t care what your religion is so just saying your catholic probably wont be a problem. With professors, some will agree with your views and others won’t, but there are a few that will respect people who stand up for their views regardless of what they are, those are the best.

I’d just encourage you to get out and meet people as soon as you get to college. It can be REALY scary and intimidating but those first 2 weeks are a golden opportunity, noone knows anyone, and everyone’s looking to make new friends and meet people. Be social, be yourself, don’t be afraid to go a little outside your comfort zone, and you will make great friends who will live you regardless of your religion.👍
 
By the way, if you go to your Newman Center, you will probably bump into some adult members of the campus community (staff, professors, etc.). If you make a point of getting to know some of those people, you may learn something to your advantage. There’s probably also a church or a couple of churches that are popular with Catholics on your particular campus. If you vary your Mass-going, you’ll eventually figure this out.

At least at our local Newman Center, there’s always a retreat being advertised. I would make a point of going on one or two retreats a year through your Newman Center as a way of meeting good people and developing spiritually.

Best wishes!
 
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