3 Things You Should Not Expect from a Christian University

Some students are sent to Christian colleges, some are sentenced there. Some choose a Christian college or university and absorb hefty loans to finance their education. Their reasons are myriad for attending a Christ-centered institution of higher learning. Many enter these schools with lofty expectations of building friendships and spiritual fitness within a strong Christian community.

However, if you want to achieve certain outcomes, whether you attend Christian College or Heathen University or anywhere on the spiritual spectrum, you’ve got to be invested in the work. And make no mistake, college is work: reading volumes, cranking out papers, taking leadership roles, learning to share a shower with a whole queue of strangers.

Some students are mistaken in thinking this is the work of the institution to do for them. If you are considering applying to a Christian college/university or are already enrolled in one, here are 3 things you should not expect from your school:

Christian universities foster conservatism. Period.

I teach at a small Christian university in the South. Surely you are envisioning me in my prairie skirt and lace collar blouse, hauling my anti-evolutionist texts like an Anne of Green Gables school marm, rattling off an impassioned lecture to a class of repressed puppet students who profess to love Jesus.

Now you can go ahead and dash those stereotypes, except for the students, of whom many in my classes do profess to love Jesus. Indeed, I find the mission-mindedness of my wonderful students, their discipline in time management and studying, and the good measure of fun they have to be so refreshing.

Christian colleges and universities do not offer conservatism as an academic byproduct of their education. They do not manufacture diplomas with degrees in Conservatist Studies. On a political spectrum, students at Christian colleges and universities may lean a little farther right of center. But ideologically, you may be surprised at how moderate or liberal students at a Christian school can be. If anything, a Christian college may be a safer haven to question beliefs than the standard liberal arts college. Rather than accepting ideas blindly, I see my students grapple and search. I like to believe they feel empowered to do so by a community with a collective aim: to search for the authentic heart of Jesus.

A spouse is a souvenir on par with a diploma

Christian colleges and universities have a storied reputation as mating grounds. “Look left, look right, your future spouse may be in sight,” is the resounding folly of orientation at colleges known for producing (often inadvertently) results better than e-Harmony.

If you are bound for Christian higher learning with the end goal of a marriage partner, the best you might be is disappointed; the worst you might be is seriously deprived.

God ordains some beautiful relationships and commitments at appointed times in our lives. College, for many of us, is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Marriage is also something we hope to only do once. If marriage and college run in tandem for you, may God richly bless you in both.

Being a full-time student and in a committed relationship or as a full-time husband or wife can be a very demanding juggle, though. It can also cut you off from some meaningful relationships with your peers and severely limit your ability to go full-on with certain activities, or just to take a weekend camping trip with friends.

Not to mention, if you are so busy searching for the love of your life, your tuition dollars might have been better spent on ChristianMingle.com

Your tools will be sharpened simply by being in the tool shed.

You can put on a superhero cape, but it will not enable you to fly. You may live in a garage, but it doesn’t make you a car. Choose the metaphor that works for you. Whatever you do, don’t assume that by virtue of attending a Christian college, you will simply become more virtuous.

In fact, to presume a life of faith simply by immersion in a “faith-filled” place presumes too much. One, that the place is full of faith and two, that you can become immersed in the faith of a place.

I have encountered students, faculty, and staff who became frustrated--to the point of leaving the university--by the high standards they expected a Christian institution to uphold, but which they found lacking. What a disappointment for them to walk away feeling emptied rather than full. Of course, a spiritual atmosphere is achieved by many contributing to it. I daresay it can be found on campuses other than those dedicated in name and deed to the cause of Christ. See also:

Like all relationships, the walk with Christ is a personal one. It requires dedication and open-heartedness. It cannot be outsourced to an administration that plans a Kingdom-focused curriculum. It cannot be attained simply by rote attendance of worships and spiritual talks. After all, some of the greatest testimonies of found faith derive from the most unlikely of places: a jail cell, an ER waiting room, on the back of a motorcycle.

God reminds us that when we seek him with our whole heart, we will find him. To those who ponder acceptances from colleges, and to those who are bound for school as the rising Class of ‘17, may you continue to seek God wholeheartedly, wherever you are.

The story that makes my students so embarrassed for me

I didn't have an e-mail address before college. Why would I have needed one? If I needed to invite a ton of people over to the beatnik party at my mom's basement, I could just call all those people. Which I did. Call all those people whose phone numbers I had memorized.  And then when my friend Dave recorded the beatnik sessions in my mom's basement, he just sent me the cassette tape of it in the mail. Not as an mp3 attachment. Also, we didn't have internet at my mom's house when I was in high school, so what was the point, anyway. It seemed to me that the kids who had internet at home, AOL, which was shortened from America Online (so cool), just frittered away all of their time in chat rooms with strangers who went by the name PeachFuzz234 or AussieBabe49. 1996. Life and times.

When I got to college, I got an e-mail address and would write the whole e-mail in the subject line. The vastness of the world wide web was skull-splitting for me. I watched as people could gamely conduct web searches and deduce what other movies certain stars had appeared in, rather just wondering for a few months if that was really Drew Barrymore as the little sister in E.T. and finally getting the movie out at the library and confirming, wow, yes, that really does appear to be a young Drew Barrymore.

That first semester of college, I bought a new desktop computer that occupied 75% of my desk. It took me roughly three weeks to assemble it and to get the internet hooked up and my friend Steve from the floor below visited my room daily just to make fun of my total grandma approach to technology. Hi Steve. Hugsies.

But by far, the moment that most crystallizes how I was a child who came of age just as the internet was emerging as our mainstream information source, it is this:

I walked down the hall to the bathroom and stopped short at the door of my hallmate Keira's room. The door was open and she and her roomie Kathy were cracking up about something, but what caught my attention was a piece of paper hanging from Kathy's bookshelf. On the paper was a picture of 3 marshmallow chicks peeps. It was clearly a print-out from your standard issue deskjet printer. But I just stood there, wondering how this got there, like they were harboring a bona fide unicorn in their dorm room. There was a picture of marshmallow peeps on a piece of paper. And Keira and Kathy had printed it out themselves.

My cognitions had ground to a halt.  I could not understand.

This was where the neurons started misfiring for me. Because, I understood how things got printed out of a printer from a computer, say, like from a word processing document. But how did the marshmallow peeps get into the computer and then get through the printer and onto paper? What did I get on my SATs? What? Why do you ask?

I asked Keira, How did you do that?

With a printer, she said.

I know, but how did you get the picture of the peeps? Did you take the picture?

No, I just found them on a website.

You found them on a ...

Then you printed them out and now there are marshmallows cut into bunny shapes dipped in sugar in a one-dimensional jpeg on a piece of recycled paper.

My world was never. Never. The same.

Lucky

There are two times when other people tell me I am lucky. The first is when I tell them that my husband and I "trade shifts" and don't have a full-time nanny with a British accent to rear our progeny when we are working outside the home.

The second is when I tell them that I don't have to pay taxes because I am too pretty for all that. "You're so lucky!" they cry, opposing finger and thumb propping up their jaws. I know, I demur, it's just that Uncle Sam and I have an understanding, you see...when you look this good, you are considered a natural treasure, you know?

 

But back to the part about my good fortune in picking a mate who is willing at times to stay home with at least one of our children while I go to work. Apparently, according to many, many people, this makes me lucky. ME. And I know this. I am lucky because I like my job and it is ever so much easier to teach a 90 minute class on interactive online journalism without two little talking turnips asking if I can help them with the Netflix again. I am lucky for that.

You know who else is lucky? My kids. They get loads of facetime with their daddy who enjoys rough-housing and playing a game called "trap challenge" of which my uptight introverted ways do not really permit me to engage in readily. They have a special rapport with their father and they have a strong attachment with both parents, which I've heard is a valuable thing to carry through this life full of hollowness and quagmires.

Oh, one more person is lucky, though! Guess who? Wow, you're good. It's true, my husband is lucky to be both a father who can spend quality time with his children and also do meaningful work outside the home. He did not have a father who was able to do this with his children. My husband tells everyone that he loves his time he loves going to the gym during the day, going grocery shopping when the aisles are not blocked by the rush hour crew.

We hear you, Universe. We are aware of our good luck in this arrangement.

Even though sometimes this arrangement stinks. The part no one remembers is that when you have two parents of young children "trading shifts," the two parents are rarely home TOGETHER. Together to have a fluid conversation, or a meal, or a hug. Or, you know. wink wink. Because you are flexing your hours in every which way, you are often working late into the night.

Trading shifts also requires that one parent is the "birthday party parent" or the "room parent" or the "family ambassador of all social gatherings" which is fine except when people do that nervous thing where they don't know what else to ask you at the birthday party so instead of saying, "Wow, it's GREAT to see YOU! How have YOU been?" they choose not to treat you like a whole person but only half of the whole and immediately charge into, "Heyyy, where's your husband?" Or your wife, as the case may be. That's annoying, isn't it? Even though you know it's not malintentioned. You know what I mean? You know what I mean.

This arrangement of the present is still infinitely better than the way we lived formerly in Boston where Loverpants held down 3 jobs and I had all these graduate classes and adjunct teachings and newborns to feed and toddlers to not loose in Target and--WOW, that life was cray.

What it all boils down to is that any person in this great wide world who has an even wider number of choices as to how to pursue his/her life as a parent or a pilot or a pizzamaker or a piano player or all of the above (at once!) is incredibly lucky.

To have choices makes one lucky. Also, having: an education, family supports, community resources, healthcare, and a number of well-fitting pairs of Spanx also make one especially lucky, as well. But that all is another conversation for another day.

For now, I consider myself lucky to call you a reader and friend.

Luckily yours, Kendra