What most people think when they hear that I go to Sacred Heart University is “private catholic school.” They think uniforms and church every Sunday when they hear Catholic school but they are mistaken because we are a Catholic-affiliated school founded on the catholic tradition.
When I first came to the school for a simple visit, the first thing that came to my mind, and I'm not going to lie, was “There is a Chapel mom?... I'm not going here.”
The first thing I had thought of was that they were going to be forcing religion and religious things down my throat or make me go to church every Sunday. That was not my thing, considering I hadn’t stepped foot in a church in seven years.
It wasn't until later in the day that I had learned more about the school and its affiliation with the Catholic religion. It completely changed my mind about the school.
Was I upset that I had to take a religion class? Yeah. It’s because I was so thick headed when it came to learning more about a religion because I had lost faith in my own.
In 2009, My grandmother had passed away. She was my best friend and it killed me never being able to see her again, it was then that I lost my faith. For years I had learned that God was good and that he only wanted the best for us but to me, how could God take her away from me and that is what was best for me.
I lost faith that he knew what he was doing. I struggled for years going back and forth with believing in him or not through some of the tough times I was going through. If you would have told someone, during that time of my life, I was going to end up in a Catholic institution, they would think you were crazy.
I have learned a lot more from being at a catholic institution and a lot of it was that it’s okay to have different faiths and to believe in different things. During most of my volunteer work, I met so many different people with such different religious beliefs and this catholic institution gave me that opportunity to do that.
Being at a Catholic institution does not mean you have to conform to the religious beliefs around you, it just means that you need to be open to it because not everyone is going to believe in the same things that you do.
During the summer going into my sophomore year at SHU, I was in a very bad car accident, a car accident that I was told I should not have walked out alive from. It changed my view on a lot of things and going to Sacred Heart gave me the opportunity to talk to a lot more people who could help me figure out what I was going through.
Although I am not immersed in a religion, I do have a lot of faith that someone was looking down me, especially on that day. It really opened my eyes and my heart that maybe there is more to a religion that to just forcibly believing in the higher power.
So to anyone who may be thinking about going to Sacred Heart or any religious institution, do not let that affiliation hinder your choice because it is just an option or something for people to fall back on. These schools only want the best for you whether that has any connection to the religion or not. Choosing to go to Sacred Heart was one of the best decisions I could have made for myself and there is no way, if I could do it all over again, I would change my decision.
