When I interviewed for the Catholic middle (and high) school I would eventually attend, I distinctly remember when they rounded the bend from academic questions to religious ones.
It was preempted by a statement of diversity: "About 50 percent of the student body is not Catholic." Then I was asked to explain, at the age of 11, how I felt about attending a religious school and why I was interested (I'm pretty sure they thought I was Jewish because of my last name, a mistake many people make).
I grew up in an incredibly liberal family and traditions, especially of the religious sort, were left up to my whim. I always joke that I've only been to Sunday school once when I slept over at a friend's house, and that I clearly did not get the point: the only detail I remember is that we were tasked with drawing a shepherd and I felt I had "won" since my drawing was the best. In my childhood, my parents let me celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah simply because I wanted to and was interested in both religions and holidays -- in fact, we still use my own handmade menorah. I've still never been to mass outside of those required once a month throughout my schooling but remember doing prayers before bed on a couple occasions in my childhood because I had asked to. Essentially, my religious upbringing is one that my parents let me craft for myself because they did not want to pressure me into a singular way of thinking.
At age 11, I was incredibly open to all religions and their practices, as I had always been taught I could pick and choose accordingly. So I responded to my interviewer that I would be excited to go to a Catholic school because I did not know much about the religion or its practices, which would make it a fun new topic to learn about in tandem with the rest of my education.
At the time, I truly meant it, but by the end of my first year of middle school, my lack of a decided faith had to turned to a lack of all faith. All I needed was a little religious education to understand that institutional religion did not have space for people like me who wanted to pick and choose (and I didn't really like most of the penultimate tenants I had to choose between either); I became a self-declared atheist and proud of it.
After this decision, I began a very interesting relationship with school because I was academically inclined and my school was a college prep school, but I also loathed my religious education and the stifling rules that came along with it. My "favorite" one that I found in the handbook--and was the only rule I would relay as part of a time-eating detention assignment--was that if one of my friends became pregnant and my mother helped her get an abortion, then I would be kicked out if this school found out about it. I was in a grey area of rebellion (towards religion) and passion (for my academics). Over time, the rigid structure overtook my love for school, and I was more than happy to leave and attend a secular university, as I vowed to never interact with religion again unless I had to.
Since then, however, I've come to two conclusions. First, religion itself has a far higher chance of bringing people under its umbrella when it is welcoming and more fluid. I think if religion had continued being introduced to me in the way it was in my formative years that I would have been far more likely to continue with some of its practices. And although I would have probably arrived at the same decision later in life, but there are more people to be won over than just myself! Second, as an adult living on my own, the past three years of college have been exponentially easier for me to navigate with some of the extreme structure I was used to in high school carrying over into my current schooling. My time management skills are pretty damn good, and I find it easy to respect authority where necessary. But the thing I am most thankful for is the critical thinking my school (and many other Catholic schools) instilled in me, that allowed me to question some of the authority of the school and its religiosity without feeling a need to openly defy it. It allowed me to make my own educated and reasoned decisions while not turning me off from the system entirely. Now, I have the spirit of a fighter, someone who wants to prove myself and my views, and with the educational base I received and am currently building on in university I have the tools to do so--and write articles such as this one!
In all, being an outsider for most of my teenage years and participating in a structure that did not have space for me made me feel like I was drowning at the time but has made me a passionate and strong individual in my adult life. I'm willing to stand up for what I believe in and go against the grain, and I have the very skills required to do so successfully from the same institution. So thanks, I guess.
