Author: HA Editorial Team

Finding Myself in the Ashes: Aisling’s Story

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Editorial note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Aisling” is a pseudonym. 

The heavy wooden door to my dorm room closed with a definitive click behind my parents. I exhaled the weight of eighteen years spent wrestling for control, for individuality, for personhood.

I was free.

I imagined this moment often, with ever-increasing fervor as the end of my homeschooling approached. Some people who grew up like me, children of conservative Christian homeschooled parents, were not allowed to go to college. But the proudly educated tradition of my family would not allow for depriving my sisters and I of higher learning. My mother was the first person in her family to go on to college after high school. It was expected.

It was my ticket out.

I chose a school not far from home, but far enough that my busy parents would be too busy to come visit often. I chose a big state school, with enough room for me to roam and spread out my roots and grow tall like the oak trees all over campus.

I imagined the freedom, the ability to do what I wanted without asking permission, to spend my days and nights as I pleased without being fussed at for staying up on my computer until 2:00 in the morning. I didn’t expect the overwhelming weight of overstimulation, social anxiety and drastic personal revelation that occurs when you spend every waking moment trying to suppress who you are and play a role.

I played the part of devoted Christian, loving and virtuous daughter, for so long. Once I had a chance to find out who was really hiding inside, I almost tore myself apart on my way out.

The last couple of years before high school “graduation,” I spent most of every day alone in my parents’ house. Dorm life, with my roommate’s near constant presence across our tiny room and shared hall bathrooms, was at once liberating and meltdown-inducing. I began quietly panicking inside as my daily hours spent in isolation suddenly gave way to never being alone. For someone who considered herself an extrovert, it was confusing. I had craved social contact but I got more than I bargained for, certainly more than I could handle.

I was also lost trying to keep up with academic pursuits far beyond anything I’d undertaken before, thanks to a barely-supervised home education that left me with no math skills to speak of and no idea of how to study successfully. My ADHD, which my mother called laziness and procrastination, made it even harder. I cried in secret frustration many times because everyone else knew things instinctively, like labeling every paper with your name and the date in two neat rows at the top left corner of the page.

From when I began homeschooling at age 6 right up until the speech at my makeshift graduation ceremony, adults told me I was the cream of the crop. Homeschoolers were supposed to be stellar academics, with fantastic test scores and great grades. Those grand speeches were little comfort to me as I struggled in a biology class I was failing because I never learned about genetics.

I hid the fact that I was homeschooled for as long as possible, only letting in a few people here and there. I was overwhelmingly met with, “I couldn’t tell! You’re so…normal.” It made me feel proud and also terrified: was I playing a part again? I definitely was very far behind on pop culture, videogames and “throwback” music, and I spent a lot of time faking it until I could catch up.

But I also found real friends. One of my first close friends was a staunch atheist, and she patiently listened to me as I parroted all the Right Words You Say To Atheists per evangelical Christianity. Through her and others like her, I began to reconsider everything I knew and formulate my own ideas about what I believed.

I made many mistakes due to ignorance. I abused alcohol, lubricating my existential crisis with cheap booze to forget the realization that everything I told myself was true might actually be wrong. But as the fog lifted, I realized there was a freedom for me to be the bold, fearless woman I’d tried to hide in fear of the countless reprimands for being too forward and opinionated.

Without the restraints of the beliefs I was taught, I was afraid I wouldn’t have any kind of moral compass. From the ashes of the beliefs I’d clung to out of fear and ignorance, I was able to rise into a person I could live with, a person I actually wanted to be.

My experience has taught me a few important things: children need freedom. Children need a safe place to make mistakes. They need to be adequately prepared for life outside the bubble of home and church. Children need socialization and adequate education. They don’t just need these things, they deserve them and have a right to them.

To the homeschooled graduates heading to college: if you are struggling personally or academically unprepared, don’t be afraid to take care of your mental health and seek extra help. Be prepared to question everything you think and know. Relish it and embrace it, because the only things worth believing will withstand the test. Don’t be afraid to burn it all down and start over if you have to, because you’ll find someone to be proud of in the ashes.

Everyday Examples of Christian Rape Culture

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The Rape of Tamar, by Eustache Le Sueur (c. 1640), public domain.

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Shaney Irene’s blog. It was originally published on October 13, 2015.

Today, a friend shared a post on Facebook from Everyday Feminism, titled 25 Everyday Examples of Rape Culture. The author, Shannon Ridgway, discusses what rape culture is before giving a list of examples in everyday culture, from chants allowed at universities to the prevelance of street harassment.

(I recommend you click the link and read the explanation of what rape culture is in that post before you continue.)

I was glad to see a list of clear examples that I could share with my friends, but I found myself running into one problem: most of my friends who deny the existence of rape culture are Christians. They would look at Ridgway’s list and declare the problem to be “the world.” They wouldn’t recognize similar examples of rape culture in their churches, small groups, books, blog posts, etc.

So with the help of some friends who also grew up in conservative Christianity, I’ve put together a list of examples of rape culture within Christian culture. If the church is going to be a safe place for women, for children, for vulnerable populations, for survivors of abuse, we must confront the ways in which Christianity is unsafe, say “enough,” and root out the attitudes and beliefs that lead to rape culture.

1. Christian rape culture is equating education about consent with “risk reduction” while calling abstinence education “risk avoidance.” 

This is a form of blaming the victim, because the underlying assumption is that if one avoids sexual activity, one will avoid the risk of assault, STDs, pregnancy, etc. One may still experience these things whether or not one chooses abstinence.

2. Christian rape culture is refusing to teach about consent because it might encourage kids to have sex. 

This erases consent as a necessary component of sexual morality.

3. Christian rape culture is when wives are told they must always be sexually available to their husbands. 

This not only ignores, but condones marital rape.

4. Christian rape culture is when pregnancies that result from rape are called “God’s will.”

What the victim hears is that their rape was God’s will, too.

5. Christian rape culture is when the false idea that pregnancy rarely happens from rape is perpetuated in Christian circles.

This opens the door for people to accuse people pregnant from rape as “wanting it,” since otherwise they would have been “too stressed out” to become pregnant.

6. Christian rape culture is when churches don’t do background checks on children’s/nursery ministry volunteers because “We know these people and they would never do that.”

Actually, most sexual assault is perpetrated by people close to and trusted by the victim. Perpetrators are experts at making people like them.

7. The way the church teaches “modesty” is rape culture.

It’s never okay to say that what a person wears determines how someone else will view them. Lust and objectification are choices someone else makes, not something that is caused by what a person wears.

8. Christian rape culture happens when prominent Christians publicly defend abusers.

Doing so sends the message to other survivors that the church will choose abusers over them.

9. Christian rape culture is when pastors and other spiritual leaders are believed over their victims, just because of their position of spiritual leadership.

Pastors are not immune to committing crimes, and statistics show the vast majority of reported sexual assault to be true.

10. Christian rape culture is any teaching that either explicitly or implicitly teaches male superiority.

Teaching that God is male, that men are spiritually stronger than women, that God gave men gifts he did not give women, etc.

11. Christian rape culture is teaching that woman was created to help and serve man.

This positions woman as a servant of man, including sexually.

12. Christian rape culture is when Christians argue for the removal of women from certain spaces (for example, the military) in order to keep sexual assault from happening.

13. Christian rape culture is when children are forced to give hugs or shake hands when they don’t want to. 

This primes children to assume that adults get access to their body when they want it, instead of teaching them that they have bodily autonomy and adults can’t just touch them because they want to.

14. Christian rape culture is when language like “colonize” and “conquer” are used to describe sex, and then the author of those words continues to be hosted on popular Christian websites. 

15. Christian rape culture is when words like “broken” and “diseased” are used to describe abuse victims. 

16. Christian rape culture is when we suggest that victims might be “at fault” for their abuse.  

The linked article has examples from workbooks from ATI, Bill Gothard’s ministry, which were used by the Duggars and have been used for a long time in homeschooling circles. This is just one extreme example, there are many more subtle examples, like suggesting that what a person was wearing, where they were, who they were friend with, etc. contributed to the abuse.

17. Christian rape culture is when abuse is called a “mistake” and people make excuses for it. 

See: Josh Duggar.

18. Christian rape culture is looking at these examples and blaming it on “those other Christians.” 

If you are a Christian and you are not speaking up when you see this happen, you’re part of the problem. Even if your church doesn’t teach these things, you probably have friends who love to watch the Duggars on TLC, or push modesty culture on their children, or…

You get the point. With stories of sexual abuse in the church coming out again and again, it’s time for all Christians of all stripes to start confronting Christian rape culture.

What examples of Christian rape culture have you seen? What ways have you found effective in confronting it? 

Teaching Abstinence Without Teaching Consent is Dangerous

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Shaney Irene’s blog. It was originally published on October 9, 2015.

Today, Christian magazine WORLD News published an article about California requiring schools to teach consent in sex education classes. Although not stated explicitly, it’s pretty clear the author, Laura Edghill, is not too happy about this. Only one of the four quotes given in the article is positive, and more time is spent discussing the supposed downsides of the bill, rather than talking about why consent is an important topic to teach. It also demonstrates that WORLD has no idea what teaching consent actually means.

“But advocates for abstinence education say that while preparing students to protect themselves from sexual assault is important, the “affirmative consent” conversation is based on the flawed assumption that the best we can do for students is teach them risk reduction, rather than risk avoidance.”

WORLD has long been a proponent of abstinence-based sex education, so it’s safe to assume that their readers are going to agree with what the abstinence educators say.

But here’s the thing: Teaching consent is not about “risk reduction” vs. “risk avoidance.” Teaching abstinence without teaching consent actually puts kids MORE at risk for sexual assault. Teaching kids to only have sexual contact within marriage won’t stop predators from attempting sexual assault. But teaching kids consent will enable them to recognize what they’re experiencing as sexual assault or not.

I know too many women who grew up in conservative Christian environments who experienced sexual assault, but did not recognize it as such at the time. Why? Because they were never taught that once they said no, the other person was committing a crime. They were never taught that only yes means yes. So they carried guilt for years, assuming they were complicit in sexual sin (“I must have tempted him in some way,” or, “I must not have protested hard enough,”) until they came across the concept of consent and realized they had been assaulted.

“Sex is like boxing. If both people haven’t consented, one of them is committing a crime.”–John Oliver

The rich part of this is that WORLD has reported extensively on the issue of sexual abuse. But in reporting to their readers that teaching consent is “risk reduction” while teaching abstinence is “risk avoidance,” they’re giving parents false information and exposing children to even more risk of sexual abuse. Not one instance of sexual abuse has been prevented by telling people to only have sex inside of marriage.

Assuming abstinence-based sex education will prevent sexual abuse is as ludicrous as assuming saying, “Don’t drive while under the influence of alcohol,” will prevent someone from getting hit by a drunk driver.

And this is a HUGE problem within the church, as this article from Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal describes. The church today does not understand consent. It assumes that teaching that sexual contact outside of marriage is enough, but it’s not. We must teach our kids that their bodies belong to them, and no one else can touch them without their okay. Without teaching consent, abuse will continue to run rampant.

So WORLD magazine, you are part of the problem. If you want to prevent more sexual abuse within the church, you need to stop acting as if teaching consent is a bad thing. You can start by giving away copies of God Made All of Me, a book written to teach consent to young children, to your readers.

I’m One Of the Lucky Ones: Muriel Sylvanus’ Story

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Muriel blogs at StoryCache.

As I’m sitting here contemplating my homeschool-to-college story and how to write about it, I think of all the other stories my homeschool brothers and sisters will have to tell alongside mine, and I think… “I’m one of the lucky ones.”

For all the positive stories of a seamless transition, I expect there to be war stories from those who had to fight for themselves. For every transition story, positive or negative, I expect that there’s an empty space where there is no story because you still haven’t gotten to go yet.

I’m lucky, because I didn’t just get to go, I was told to go. College was expected and prepared for.

Of course, I didn’t want to go. My argument was “If I’m just going to be a stay-at-home wife and mom, what’s the point?”

The argument came partly from my mother, and partly from my group of friends who weren’t going to be going to college. With them, I complained about how ridiculous college was, and said that I was only doing it because my dad was making me, thereby establishing my cover as a godly, submissive daughter despite the cesspool of worldliness I was about to wade into. Together, we justified my dad’s decision as something that God would bring good out of – maybe I would find a husband there.

Behind all that ideology and back-patting was a severe burn-out on all things educational, born of long years of being educated in a way that wasn’t conducive to my learning style at all. I was intellectually exhausted and completely unmotivated. But since it was verboten to critique homeschooling, and by correlation, my parents, I clung to the ideology. Cue more back-patting. Such a good little homeschooler!

Now I’m on the other side of college and I can’t believe how just-dig-a-hole-and-bury-myself-alive stupid I was being.

College was not difficult academically – the face-to-face setting and classroom interactions kept me focused and alert and my approach to picking a degree was a “path of least resistance” move.

It was not difficult financially – being from a large family with a modest, not extravagant, income made federal and state grants a certainty, and I had the support I needed from my parents to file and to fill in whatever financial gaps where left.

It was not difficult socially – embarrassing in retrospect to be sure, but at the time I was elated to have broader social access; I loved diversity even as I tried to squelch it by attempting to convert everyone; and honestly, I loved being the weird one in a given social group. It made me stand out as actually being someone interesting and unique, whereas in the more homogenized, acceptable weirdness of homeschool culture, I was relegated to the sidelines due to being female and shy.

Of course, it could be said that I shouldn’t have found college such an easy experience– what if I had picked a more difficult degree? If I went back to school today, it’d be in an entirely different field that I simply don’t have the necessary pre-requisites for. I would have to do catch-up work first. My homeschool education would not have been adequate. And my approach to socialization should indicate just how seriously inept my social skills actually were (and still are today, to be honest, though I’ve learned how to hide it).

But I’m still the lucky one, because I still have a degree, despite the rampant facepalms and stupidity, and that is enough to get me into the door of any public university should I pursue different, or further, degrees.

And I’m lucky to have someone who made me do it, because for all that my dad was pretty awesome and deserves sainthood, there’s another story where someone’s parents were heinously misguided and kept their children imprisoned in patriarchy, isolated from society, and academically stunted.

And that’s unequivocally wrong and horrendous.

So to all the unlucky ones – I’m sorry. I don’t even have the words to express how frustrating and angering it must be. But you do, and I’ll be reading your stories. And to those who don’t yet have stories – I hope one day you will.

And to the lucky ones like me – let’s recognize our privilege, and be aghast that in this day and age, higher education is still inaccessible to some. Let’s fight for the educational rights of all and not rest in complacency.

And to the lucky, newly-minted graduates who are about to create a story: Don’t call your history prof a “liberal commie” just because he doesn’t teach revisionist history, mkay?

Dealing with Culture Shock: Latebloomer’s Story

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HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Latebloomer” is a pseudonym. Latebloomer’s story was originally published on her blog Past Tense, Present Progressive. It is reprinted with her permission.

There was always an expectation in my family that I would go to college. Both of my parents had a college education and saw its value, and they didn’t cave to the general attitude at our homeschooling cult church that higher education wasn’t appropriate or necessary for girls. Even though my parents’ expectation was for me to attend an extremely fundamentalist Christian college simply to get a skill to “supplement my future husband’s income, if necessary,” that expectation was more than what many of my female peers at church had, and I’m grateful for it. And, unlike many homeschooling families in our circles, my mom also put in the necessary work to make sure I wouldn’t encounter any roadblocks on my way from homeschool high school to college–she made a very professional-looking and detailed high school transcript that included my GPA, she signed me up for the CHSPE (California High School Proficiency Exam) so that I could have a legal high school diploma, and she made sure that I took the SAT.

Still, it took me three years after graduating from homeschool high school before I began to pursue higher education. Years and years of severe isolation had not emotionally or socially prepared me to deal with the world outside my home. Years of listening to sermons about the evils of the outside world had left me terrified to leave the “shelter” of my home, even though my home life consisted of nothing more than broken family relationships and debilitating depression during those years. Years of heightened spiritual sensitivity had also paralyzed me with no sense of direction in life, waiting for a sign from God about what to do with my life, terrified of making a mistake.

With no end in sight, the darkness of those years gradually increased my sense of desperation until it was finally enough to overcome my inertia. I decided to be a moving vehicle that God could steer, and I would simply make the best decisions I could until I heard from him. I started taking a full load of classes at my local community college a few months later.

I entered my classes confident in my academic ability. Thanks to my mom’s willingness to administer yearly standardized tests and my scores from the SAT, I knew that I was an above-average student. As I expected, I performed well on tests and got great grades.  But I had other college struggles that caught me off guard. For instance, I was used to simply reading textbooks for the info I needed, so I had no idea how to take good notes in class, and my handwriting and rushed spelling looked like a child’s. In class, I’d get distracted occasionally by hearing the pronunciation of words that I had only ever seen on paper and had been saying wrong in my head for years. I sometimes had questions, but no idea about the etiquette of asking questions during the lecture.  Additionally, my teachers were surprisingly fond of group work, something that I had no experience with, and I was at a loss as to how to collaborate or give/receive feedback.

But for me, the worst thing of all was my discomfort with myself, my body, my existence. While everyone around me seemed to just plop down easily on any available floor space or chair in order to study and eat and chat, I simply couldn’t do it. I could never relax and be at ease where there was even a chance I might be seen by another person, and attempts to talk with others left me breathless and sweaty, with my heart racing.  At this time in my life, I couldn’t even eat in front of another person–not because of an eating disorder, but because of anxiety. The pressure of eating and chatting at the same time made me physically shake, because I had only really experienced eating silently together with my family, and we never had people over for meals. Because of these issues, I couldn’t handle being on campus for a second longer than necessary. For breaks between classes, I would sit in my car or drive home and come back just in time for the next class. The stress of being in public and being surrounded by people was too much.

But over time, my continued practice and effort started to have positive effects. As I went into my second semester in community college, I wasn’t constantly teetering on the edge of panic, and I started to notice positive things happening despite my social stress. People around me didn’t seem bothered by me. People sat by me in class. People smiled at me. People tried to talk to me. I started to feel a spark of human connection and see that people could be kind and decent even when they didn’t share my beliefs and even when they had no agenda and nothing to gain from it. It confused me because it didn’t fit the narrative I grew up with, but it also gave me a vague sense of hope about the life I might be able have as an adult out on my own.

Meanwhile, I was ramping up to transfer to a conservative Christian university far from home, in a place where I didn’t know a single person. It sounds like a big deal, except that I really had almost nothing that I was leaving behind–really, just one close friend that I had made several years before and that I’d been able to confide in, a person who was similarly sheltered and homeschooled. The thought of a fresh start somewhere was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. I figured that the culture of the Christian university campus would feel at least a little familiar, and that having my own room on campus to hide in would be a welcome relief. I made sure to request an international roommate so that my weirdness–my odd clothing style, my poor conversational ability, and my nearly-total ignorance of my peer group’s slang, movies, music, etc.–wouldn’t be as obvious.

In the environment of gender-segregated dorms, no alcohol, no sex, no drugs, and no dancing, there wasn’t too much around me to shock me at my Christian university. Instead, it was the little things that made life challenging. One of my daily challenges was dealing with the shared dorm bathroom, where there were always at least a couple other people milling around. Even though it was set up so that there was no need for public nudity, I didn’t have any idea how to pee or shower in a shared space. I couldn’t stand around casually wrapped in a towel doing my hair and makeup and chatting with the other girls, not a chance. I couldn’t even pee while other people were listening.  This was a completely foreign experience to me and one that took me months to get used to.

For the first semester, my life on campus consisted of going to class, doing homework in my room, and hanging out in my room, which was luckily often empty since my Chinese roommate, despite having just arrived in the country, already had a life and friends. It sounds like a recipe for homesickness, but this is something that I never experienced the whole time I was in college. Instead, I was the happiest I’d ever been (really, it was just that I was less severely depressed, but at the time it felt like happiness in comparison to the previous years). Even though I had no idea about how to connect with the other girls in my dorm and was too anxious to really try, I saw that they were nice people and I felt like the future was full of possibilities.

Things started to change after a few months, thanks to a couple good dorm events that brought me out of my room. This proved to be just enough for one of the outgoing girls in the dorm to seek me out later and start to pry into my little closed-clam-shell of a life. Friendship with just one outgoing person in the dorm served as a bridge to making more connections and boosted my confidence to attend other school events. Although at first I just drifted along trying not to cause anyone any trouble by having opinions or problems, during the next few years I was able to start figuring out more about who I was, what my interests were, and where my place in the social scene of life was.

Figuring out my place in life turned out to be much more complicated than simply getting past the worst of my anxiety though. Even though I was several years older than my dormmates and classmates, I had years of catching up to do, learning about things like cliques, gossip, power dynamics, the art of self-deprecation/teasing/complimenting, and how people seem to group themselves based on life habits, clothing choices, and hobbies. It’s hard to explain, but I simultaneously felt I was decades older than my peers, and also much much younger, which meant that I either felt like I was taking someone under my wing or basking in their glory. I had no idea how to connect to someone as an equal, and I didn’t even start to learn that until I was about to graduate from college.

Looking back now at my transition from homeschool to college life over a decade ago, I feel a sense of pride in how much I grew and changed in a few short years. I finished college able to relax in class and chat comfortably with friends. I no longer hid away in my room all the time. I stretched myself. I attended dorm events. I cheered with enthusiasm at sports games. I worked out at the school gym. I went to parties. I dated. I asked out a guy. I got away with breaking the campus rules about gender segregation and alcohol. Years of pushing through my anxiety paid off, and I finished college feeling ready to tackle life and live on my own as a working adult.

Given my set of issues, I can’t imagine how I would have transitioned to adulthood any other way. The most important things I learned in college were not academic, but instead life and social skills that paved the way for me to have a satisfying life today.

Living with a Schedule: Karen Poole’s Story

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Stepping onto a college campus for the first time was not a big deal for me. I was ready to leave home. Tired of the monotony, drudgery of my daily life at home, I was excited to move on to bigger and better things.

Thankfully, my parents had never encouraged me to believe the typical mantras that many of our homeschooling friends encouraged, that 1) I shouldn’t go to college and have a career, or 2) women can go to college, but their main priority should be to find a husband.

I wasn’t fazed by the dorm life. I had grown up with 8 younger siblings, after all. Crazy and hectic was the norm. I wasn’t even concerned about the fact that I had 5 roommates in a small room my freshman year. We all shared growing up. That was normal life for me.

The atmosphere of the college wasn’t an issue. My parents both happened to be alumni, so I was familiar with the campus and the overall feel of the small Christian liberal arts college. I wasn’t even really concerned about not knowing a soul. I wasn’t overt or outgoing, but I was comfortable meeting new people and developing new friendships. Our close relationship with many of our “secular” neighbor friends growing up had provided a good background for that.

The classes weren’t really that big of a deal. I actually found them to be much easier than most of my peers, and didn’t have to work extremely hard to do fairly well. I graduated with a 3.64 GPA. None of these factors bothered me that much. NO, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the schedule. As an education major with a music minor, I had about 160 credits to cram into the shortest time possible. My family didn’t have very much money, and I didn’t have access to a job that would allow me to take the sometimes 6 years that many people allow themselves to graduate with an education major. This meant that I was constantly tired, always on the run, had many credits each semester plus the music electives and performing groups to fulfill my requirements for my minor. It was insane.

I went from the doldrums and lazy days of being homeschooled, where I could set my own schedule as long as I completed my assignments in a timely manner, to sometimes 8-10 hours of classes per day. Don’t get me wrong, college is exhausting for everyone. However, not having a structured routine or going through the high school experience, I did not have a clue as to what I was getting myself into schedule-wise. I ended up sleeping through classes and feeling guilty about it, going back to my dorm if I had more than a 45 minute creak to take a 20 minute nap, falling asleep in the library, etc., etc.

The routine was so different than my entire school experience, that it was almost mental overload. I wasn’t an organized person, and certainly wasn’t used to having to micro-manage my time to accomplish everything that needed to be done. However, I soldiered through. I didn’t quit. I drank 64 oz. sodas to keep me awake to finish projects and papers. I persevered.

And although I think my homeschool background failed to prepare me for that aspect of college, another trait got me through – flexibility.

Because, even though the overall experience could have knocked me out and I could have run away with my tail between my legs sobbing because I just couldn’t do it anymore, homeschooling taught me that it’s ok to be flexible. It’s normal for things not to go exactly the way that you planned them. Constant changes in plans – Dad has business colleagues over today so we have to clean the house instead of doing school this morning, or it just snowed 6 inches and we need to go shovel our elderly neighbor’s driveway – taught me that my life will never be just the way I want it, and that I need to adjust to what it is, make the best of it, and keep on going.

My PoliSci Professor Has a Potty Mouth – and I Like It: Savannah’s Story

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HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Savannah” is a pseudonym.

If you’re not going to go to a Christian college, you have to make sure your faith is rock-solid by the time you graduate high school. Because college—especially professors of the humanities like psychology and social studies—hates you. College is the epitome of “the world”. The second you mention that you’re a Christian, the non-religious students will mock you. Perhaps even ostracize you or censor you. Perhaps have you thrown out of school for your beliefs if you’re not “liberal” enough for them. Professors will openly mock your beliefs in class, even calling on you personally to make fun if they know you’re a Christian. They may even assign you projects that violate your religious beliefs and you will be obligated to do them, because colleges will give a free pass to other religions, but not you. If you’re not Superman-strong in your faith by the time you go to college, you’ll probably cave to the pressure and fall away.

This is what they told me.

Homeschooled for my entire life, I had no exposure to a classroom environment. Before anxiety got the best of me and made it impossible to deal with, the curriculum was religious. I’d never had a secular education—never even knew what it was like. And so I believed them. I believed the preacher who told me his professor declared in class that no gods were real and anyone who believed in one was delusional, and I believed him when he said the professor called upon him and other Christian students to berate them for their beliefs.

It would be even worse for us now, he said, in the 21st century. Our society was getting more and more liberal. Colleges, the Liberalest Places on Earth, were Ground Zero for trying out these new liberal measures, among them the normalization and acceptance of non-heterosexual, non-cisgender identities and the stifling of free speech—for Christians and conservatives, of course; liberals could say whatever they wanted. We were on the front lines. We were, perhaps, five years away from the beginning of the end of the world, and it was soon to be open season on Christians.

When you are the victim of spiritual brainwashing, thought control, and other individuality- and critical thinking-quenching measures by your local church, a religious education, whether formal in a Christian school or informal at home, is utterly exhausting. When your genes predispose you to anxiety disorders and depression, a religious education combined with spiritual abuse can make you suicidal. So when I finally won and got to be taught from a secular homeschooling program for high school, half of that weight was lifted. And I excelled. Before, I had been an A-B student, but in my “worldly” curriculum, I had a 4.0. I still had to suffer through Sundays, but I could push it all from my mind as soon as we drove out of the parking lot. Eventually, I was even able to push my limits and leave the church.

But there was still the problem of college.

When I tasted the freedom of secular education, I knew that I could never go back. So after I took my first SAT and began receiving brochure after brochure from colleges in my state, I examined each of them for any hint of religiosity. Any college that even looked Christian got its brochure recycled. I memorized their names and blacklisted them. I’d heard about Bob Jones. I’d heard a story from a visiting youth teacher who said he got in trouble for touching his then-girlfriend’s head because opposite sexes were not allowed to be near each other. I remembered the frustration, the panic attacks, the nightmares I had at the beginning of high school. I could not even take the risk that I would suffer through that again.

The “excessive”, as the pastor called it, liberalism of secular colleges might have scared me if I’d been the same little girl that he frightened into believing I’d be vilified just for who I am. But I was not. The two years of secular high school education that I got changed me immensely—not that I wasn’t already changing before, but now I was allowed. The curriculum wasn’t constantly contradicting my own views, or guilt-tripping me. Between the ages of fifteen and eighteen I became exactly the kind of thing he’d warned me against becoming—one of those dirty, worldly liberals. And I love it. I love myself. I love the people around me.

As I write this, it’s the Friday of my first week of freshman year and I’ve already had several conversations on privilege and intelligent critiques of religious culture. Half my professors swear in class. I’m taking two classes in the social sciences right now, and I’ve yet to hear any mockery of any religions or their followers—in fact, the only religion-related degradation I’ve seen or experienced came from a street preacher who hangs out just feet from campus property so that he can scream at students without repercussion. (Seriously, dude, don’t you have some feeding the poor to do?) Had I not gotten, as a friend of mine says, “out of the box” two years before my first experience with such a free environment, where everyone I have encountered so far is radically different from the people I grew up around and the expectations I would have been held to if I had stayed, this might have seemed like a little hell. Instead, it’s a tiny piece of heaven. I feel no pressure to conform to a religious or moral standard too high to reach, or follow rules I don’t believe in.

Still, to my own surprise, I’ve retained some faith, in spite of the abuse, the nightmares, the panic attacks—despite not setting foot in a church in two years. Retained, by my own standard, anyway. Not by that of the preacher of my old church—my newfound liberalism would disqualify me from any sort of legitimate religiosity; I am delegated to the ranks of “fake,” “halfhearted,” “lukewarm.” But I have found many more interesting people here in the ring of second-class Christian citizens. And a hundred times more love.

And I can never see that as a coincidence.

 

Getting a Higher Education: LJ Lamb’s Story

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HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “LJ Lamb” is a pseudonym.

Nothing prepared me for the shock that my homeschooling experience was woefully inadequate.

Despite getting an extremely high score on the test that asked about my ability to read and do basic maths, I quickly discovered that I didn’t know what I needed to know to survive in the classroom.

My only saving grace was that I needed to speak to someone about course load and disability, and once they heard the magic word disability everyone sent me on to the next person they thought could help me – which meant that I got signed up for scholarships and grants, got loads of advice and academic support, and managed to pull off decent grades. Nothing flashy, but solid grades that said I had studied.

During counselling I realised my experience was normal for a homeschooler, and I actually was coping extremely well, all things considered. Honestly, I’m not sure how I survived the first year. Often I felt completely overwhelmed and several times I freaked out that I didn’t have what it took, and I had no idea how to complete the assessment work.

At some stage after my first year I realised that I had not been given anything like an education from my mother, and it was a miracle that I was as good as I was with what I did know. My mother NEVER made me write assignments.

I did a total of 10 tests in my academia, and almost all of these were music related.

The only writing I had done that was essay-like, was 3 things I initiated because I wanted to write. I was never taught how to structure an essay, I had no idea, I simply wrote from my heart, which wasn’t very consistent when it came to getting grades. I can’t do math past my timetables. I know what a square root is, but please don’t ever make me use it because I don’t know that I would get it right.

My mother thought it was completely appropriate to give me 3rd grade science in high school, and then complained when I chewed through books in a few weeks. I still can’t spell, and especially not under pressure. Again, finished 3rd grade in high school. Mother didn’t care.

The only anything I did at a high school level was some of Jay Wile’s year 12 science. Somehow I was able to pick the books up and learn while only really having a 3rd grade science level.

Apparently I didn’t need chemistry either, being a girl and all you know.

I badly wanted to be a doctor. I had thought for a long time about what career in the science and medical field I wanted and it was perfect. Mother told me I was too stupid to be a doctor. My piano teacher on the other hand, believed I could. Unfortunately, I didn’t trust my piano teacher enough at that age to open up about why I thought I couldn’t be a doctor, which summed up to, Mother thinks I’m stupid, and has completely freaked me out about having to see cadavers as part of my study because she hates medicine. She is the only teacher I have ever had. Of course her opinion goes.

Apparently she was trying to live my life for me. Never mind that I actually do love medicine. Never mind that the cadavers don’t bother me. I respect their sacrifice, and what that means for me and the world of medical science, and I learn from them.

 

Following is my advice to homeschool alumni wanting to obtain a higher education.

  • Do a bridging course. I didn’t, and I wish I had.
  • Find out what the course requirements, prerequisites and assumed knowledge are prior to applying, and start preparing for them.
  • Find your academic gaps and look for ways to get them filled early in the piece.
  • Don’t be ashamed of your past. It’s not your fault. Be honest with your academic staff and support staff in asking for help. They can be very compassionate and understanding.
  • Tap into every resource that there is available to you.
  • Learn how to write a basic assignment and brush up on your maths.
  • Find out what resources you have at your particular institution. Mine had transition staff, English writing staff, maths help, counselling, disability support and social workers as main points of assistance. I used every single one of them in my first year.
  • Be realistic and kind to yourself. You have big gaps. They will not be bridged overnight. Don’t overload on subjects at first.
  • Find people who will support you.
  • Make friends with people. It’s okay if they are different and/or not Christian.
  • I made friends with the nerds. It helped me, because we were all a bit crazy and they could help my study style.
  • You do have a right to an education, and being a woman doesn’t make you ineligible. Don’t let anyone else convince you otherwise.
  • People who believe in you and your dreams and goals are essential. This goes double if you aren’t supported by your parents and family.
  • Get internet at home if at all possible.
  • Buy second hand textbooks online, or check notice boards. If you are in a hurry, finding a second year student for the same course may mean they will be happy to sell you the lot for a bundle price. Easy for you, easy for them. (But do shop around prior to purchasing!)
  • Look at getting a new job prior to starting if you are in full time work.
  • There are accommodation options within institutions if you need help or subsidized accommodation.
  • Take advantage of any extra tutorial groups, study sessions, etc. Trust me on this. They help a lot!
  • Don’t forget to apply for all the scholarships and grants you may be eligible for. You would be amazed how much money people will give you sometimes for being female, or disabled, or poor, and it can be extremely helpful. I had several things paid for by grants, including a new laptop when mine died, equipment to help with my physical and medical problems, and other money towards books, necessary one-off purchases, other useful things such as an iPad, etc. Sometimes there are large scholarships for persons who overcome several difficulties and extenuating circumstances to study, so ensure that you are aware, as that may mean you have a much easier transition.

Intellectual Traditions: Molly Dodd’s Story

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Molly Dodd blogs at Sticky Green Leaves.

After some eleven years of homeschooling, overlapping with three years of local community college Gen Eds and art classes, my parents drove me and a few suitcases up to a medium sized public university, where they had met, married, been enchanted by ideas, and baptized as Christians. In the car, I read them excerpts from For the Life of the World, a book on sacramental theology by Fr. Alexander Schmemann, a Russian Orthodox priest. We talked about the way he insists that Christianity is not a religion, comparing it to the Evangelical slogan we had grown tired of, “it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.” We appreciated the precision with which he laid out what he meant by that — what both “religion” and “the Church” meant to him, and in what way he believed them to be different, along with his obvious love for the sacramentality of Creation.

In addition to academic and life skills, I learned from my parents to be conscious of the intellectual and theological traditions we inhabit; the philosophical lenses though with we encounter the world. Their beloved philosophy professor, Dr. Wood, had studied under O K Bouwsma, who studied under Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was influenced by Kierkegaard, who was known to exclaim things like “shout it from the rooftops: truth is subjectivity!” and leave it to the reader to figure out the extent of his irony. Along with that, I inherited a tradition of beautiful theological fairy-tale tellers, myth makers, and mythopoetic enthusiasts (Inklings, George MacDonald, G K Chesterton, Antione de St. Exupery), and great, dense, thoughtful stories (The Brothers Karamazov, Les Miserables, Greek epics). By the time I went to college we had also started reading Eastern Orthodox writers, including some beautiful Byzantine, Arab, and North African theologians. We were a little snobby about self-consciously Christian books, from heartwarming prairie romances, to earnest pleas for courtship, to stifling Bible study booklets. We had read enough truly good books to recognize the mediocre or saccharine ones.

My parents were evangelical when I was growing up, because Evangelicals believed that the Bible was true, without equivocating, and so did they. Still, we never quite fit in. We were introverts in an extroverted church, engaging with a different intellectual tradition than most of the church. They were also passionate about education in general, not only homeschooling, and have both taught in public schools since I graduated.

In a lot of ways, my parents did homeschooling right, at least for me.

When I transferred to the university as a junior, I decided to major in Art Education because I had a lot of art credits already, but wanted an obvious job to do when I graduated. I had a mix of romantic excitement about books, ideas, and intellectual engagement, and cynicism about the College of Education. Despite some engaging classes in art history, wood fire ceramics, and argument analysis, cynicism largely won out within the institutional coursework. Education was a poor fit for my temperament, strengths, and life experience, which emphasized philosophical pondering over real world management concerns. Also, most of my courses assumed a good grasp on what public school classrooms are actually like, based on experience as a student, which I didn’t have. I spent a lot of time wandering around campus and pacing my dorm hall muttering to myself about “cognitive dissonance.” Transitioning from homeschool to college was much easier than from college to teaching in a public school.

One thing I do regret about my college experience is that it nearly extinguished my love for arts and crafts, which had been encouraged through near daily 4-H meetings. I’m good with my hands, at devising beautiful and occasionally useful objects, and also with my mind, at picking apart ideas and tracing them back to assumptions and reasoning. But postmodern, post-industrial art criticism is a precarious business, destroying as much as it illumines. I would regularly end up, in the course of art apologetics (the branch of art education aimed at policy makers, school principles, and the students who would prefer not to be there), concluding that visual arts can be true, good, and beautiful; they can be good for people’s creativity, observation skills, and appreciation of the world; they may come in handy for various reasons; but it’s more or less arbitrary what exactly students learn, or how exactly they learn it. And I hate enforcing arbitrary things on unwilling students. So eventually my own work began to feel arbitrary as well, and I largely gave up on it.

A few years later I got a Masters in Liberal Arts at a lovely little Great Books college with a long and venerable history (for America), because even though my degree had opened interesting, practical doors to me in the real world, I still felt I had missed out on my romantic ideal of what college should be. I got to read important books from the Western canon all day while sitting on balconies or in parks and watching the sky, then sit around a table and talk about them. It was delightful.

I got pretty solid grades, but aside from a few electives, most of my positive intellectual, spiritual, and social engagement came about through involvement as a catechumen at the local Greek Orthodox mission. There were theological books to be read, Byzantine liturgical chants to be learned, a complex liturgical tradition of feasts and fasts to practice, and a warm, welcoming little community made up mostly of first or second generation Greeks and students. My parents were supportive and interested in what I was learning. In my second year of college, they drove up for my baptism into the Orthodox church, and to bring my home for Christmas break, which included a week stay at a Serbian monastery.

Every now and again my Protestant high school, and later college, youth groups had talked about all the temptation I was expected to face in college, which never materialized, but it was a very minor part of my overall experience. The same people suspected icons of being idolatrous, which I was also unconcerned about. They invited me to a crafts class, college dinners, and a ball (where my neckline was deemed too low), and were pretty accepting of any perceived theological oddities.

It’s hard, and perhaps not even desirable, to trace back everything I experienced in college to specific causes, be they homeschooling, religion, temperament, or anything else. Was I somewhat awkward and naive? Yes. I still am, to an extent. Would I have been less awkward and naive if I had gone to a regular school? It’s hard to tell. Maybe. Has my awkwardness and naivety hurt me? Also hard to tell. Not in ways that are very important to me, I think. Maybe if I had gone to a good school I would have learned math and science better. Maybe then I could have taken a more technical major.Maybe I could be working in a neuroscience lab! In some alternate reality I’m well on my way to becoming an important neuroscientist. Or maybe not. Probably not.

Socialized but Sheltered: Emily DeFreitas’s Story

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Socialized but sheltered is the phrase I’d use to describe my state when I entered college.

I knew how to communicate with people. I had enough social skills to get by, but I had been so underexposed to new people and ideas that I would be shocked and confused quite a bit during my first year.

Academically, my transition into college went smoothly. I had gotten a real high school diploma and transcripts through NARHS; I also took college level courses at my local community college as a high school senior. I highly recommend both of those things to anyone homeschooling for high school. Because of them, I had no homeschooling-related issues with the admissions process, and had a pretty good understanding of what a college class was like, having taken a few.

The main things I hadn’t experienced were living away from my parents for an extended period of time and encountering religious and political diversity on a regular basis.

I chose to study creative writing and English at Widener University, a private college near Philadelphia with no religious affiliation and a pretty diverse student body. School was a good hour and a half from home, so I lived on campus for all four years. My transition to life on campus was definitely aided somewhat by my parents. They literally insisted that I stay at school for a full month before even thinking about coming home for a weekend. That set me up for success because I didn’t have the option to chicken out and go home if homesickness decided to rear its ugly head. There was only one instance in which it did, several months into my freshman year, but I’ll get to that later.

While I was homeschooled (for every grade except 9th), most of my friends were Catholic, like me. I met them at church, or through Catholic homeschooling co-ops. My friends who weren’t Catholic were conservative Christians, often also homeschoolers. I was severely underexposed to liberal ideas, so much so that in college when I stated my conservative opinions I was shocked to discover that many of my peers didn’t share those views. I was much more right wing than I thought I was. (I thought of myself as a middle-of-the-road independent at that time because I supported marriage equality.)

In fact, in spite of my own support of marriage equality, I quickly discovered how uncomfortable I was when other people voiced their support of the issue. One student wanted to do a poster about the issue for Constitution Day, and posted it to a message board for a program I was in. I was a bit shocked. Could she do that? Wasn’t a topic like that taboo? If I remember correctly, she wanted to create a display that would start dialogue on the issue, which is a great idea for a college setting. Why was I uncomfortable? It wasn’t that I didn’t want people to agree (or even disagree) with me. The main issue, I soon realized, was that I had never met so many socially liberal people before.

I was uncomfortable because I had no idea what was normal for these people. What were their expectations of me?

Because of the lack of political diversity I had been exposed to, I spent my freshman year pretty much completely unable to figure out when it was socially acceptable to bring up politics. I had never developed the sensibility to choose a different topic even for the sake of a peaceful lunch with my friends. Worse, I was grossly misinformed on several issues, and was often surprised to get into an argument with a peer and have him or her refute my claims easily. The issue that caused me the most social woes was definitely the issue of abortion.

At home, I had been taught that I was part of a “pro-life generation,” meaning that young people were supposedly becoming increasingly pro-life. Having attended the March for Life in Washington D.C. twice, and been president of a pro-life organization during my high school years, abortion was my favorite political issue. I mistakenly thought that making pro-life statements among people I had just met would garner at least partial support from most of my peers. I would bring it up all the time—in the dormitory, or in the dining hall at the tables my friends and I would push together to accommodate everyone we had just met. I would get into loud arguments with people I had only met the day before. I was literally just trying to find a friend with whom I could share a common hatred of what I perceived as baby killing.

Ultimately I found people with a variety of opinions on the issue, and the vast majority of them had much more nuanced thoughts than I had. They were also better informed.

Much like politics, religion was another difficult subject. There were other students who practiced their religions regularly like me, but there were many more who practiced a different religion, or who had one but didn’t practice it at all. Many of my friends identified as Christian but weren’t churchgoers. I met a few open atheists during my freshman year, a few Muslim students, cultural Jews, and some Catholics who were fairly liberal. The idea that there could be so much religious diversity in one place was eye-opening, but also difficult for me at first. I used to walk to the nearby Catholic church alone, before I met another student who was looking for a church buddy. My biggest moment of homesickness was when I was upset that I had no one to go to mass with me. It’s the only time that I cried as a freshman over something that I missed about home. Everything else was so new and exciting that I hardly had time to feel homesick.

I definitely made some social flubs along the way, but the time absolutely flew by once I started really sinking my teeth into classes and extracurricular activities. By my sophomore year I had finally grown accustomed to the fact that the people around me were going to think a thousand different things about the world, and that was OK.

Eventually, instead of looking for people to state my opinions to, I started to look for opinions and ideas I hadn’t heard before. I came into college with my parents’ opinions and religious beliefs, and came out with completely different ones.

Because I had finally been exposed to so much, I knew my ideas were my own. They were informed opinions I could be proud to have, and no, I won’t be bringing them up at lunch on the first day of work.

I know better than that now.