Conservative, private, baptist schools are generally a hit or miss, especially if you're a dirty liberal such as myself. Although the people I chose to surround myself with in college were lovely individuals, the negatives of the school's culture as a whole seemed to overshadow my love for my friends. It's hard to be yourself at a school where seemingly everyone else is telling you to change who you are to fit the mold of someone else. If you're trying to be a pastor's wife, you need to be enrolled in a university as such as soon as possible, but if you're trying to be an independent, free-thinking individual, then a private university is going to suck more than Monica Lewinsky. Obviously, these statements aren't universal because I have friends who adore their small conservative school, but I struggle to appreciate the things that they love about it. While some things about such an institution are beautiful, other things are simply pitiful, for example, the fact that half of my viewers stopped reading this because I made a reference to something as heinous as oral sex.

One of my coworkers asked me what I have learned at my college, and the first thing that came to mind was "how to be a good Christian wife". While that isn't a problem, that isn't what I want to learn in college, and certainly shouldn't be the focal point of my college education. I'm a communications major, and honestly, I could tell you more about how to be a Christian in the workplace than I could about how to present an idea to a board of colleagues. While my spirituality is very important to me, the real world doesn't care what my faith is. The real world cares about how competent of an employee I will be, and that's something that isn't being taught to me in the classroom.

I took a class on ethics and the conclusion of how ethics is defined is through a basis of religion, implying that people who aren't religious, don't have a sense of morality. Well, that certainly isn't the message of love that Christians need to send out. However, when I made that statement, I was attacked, I was belittled, and I was passionately told that my opinion was wrong by over half the class. That is NOT the type of education that I want, and who would? Who wants to attend a college where classes are taught on the basis of one-way thinking? Who wants to go to a class where they are attacked for having a different mindset than the majority of their peers? The thing about private colleges, is they aren't very diverse. The majority of our student body is upper-class, white, Christians. Diversity just isn't a thing at my school because the entire classroom setting, my peers, the culture of my university believes that it's conservative, baptist teaching, or you're wrong, and that's a major turnoff to so many people, including myself.

Whereas this lack of diversity is annoying, it also was beneficial in the strengthening of my relationship with Christ. As a new student, I was a very weak believer, in fact, I was turned off to the idea of organized religion in general. When I would tell that to people, most people would listen, they would understand, and they would share their personal testimony or thoughts on faith. At first, I was put off by it, but eventually, I realized that these people had such a passion for what they stood for. I knew something was up. Eventually, I started talking to the right people who motivated me to discover more about faith in a factual way so I could figure out why I did or did not believe in Christ. Upon doing that, I discovered a love and sense of peace that seems unreal and unexplainable without basis of faith. I formed the relationship with Christ that I am so grateful for, that wouldn't have happened if the people I was surrounded by weren't Christians. I'm now confident enough in my faith where I can have deep, theological discussions and (for the most part) have the scripture to back it up. I can now talk to people who have different beliefs than I do, and I'm not swayed by their viewpoints. That isn't something that would ever have happened at any other university.

While I am very grateful of that, there are aspects of the lack of diversity that were simply tiresome. In college, I was taught that my appearance is what makes me who I am. People only knew me for what I wear, what I look like, and the few things they may have heard about me. And those people would claim that they knew who I was, and claim that based off of the one conversation we ever had about where I got my shirt, that they know me, therefore they have a right to an opinion of me in which they find necessary to discuss. It really is an exemplification of smiling to your face and then stabbing you in the back, which is what Christians are constantly accused of. It's fake. So many people were quick to accept and tolerate this one special needs kid, but as soon as he left they made snide comments about his unwanted presence and his appearance. Many students are so nice to him, and as soon as he is out of earshot, all they do is speak negatively of how awful they think he is. It's fake. Now, if you asked these same people if they were judgmental based off of appearance, of course, they would all say "no", but that's because everyone wants to say what they wish they were like, rather than what they really are like. There is a false sense of acceptance and honesty because people want to seem much more accepting than they really are.

So if you ask me "Kathryn, why are you transferring colleges?" It's because I'm being utterly stifled. I'm not learning about who I am, I'm learning about who I should be from the eyes of a generation that is so behind in the modern times of love and acceptance. I'm being surrounded by a group of people who carry the same beliefs as their middle-aged parents because they have never been taught to think for themselves. I want to be independent. I want to make my own decisions. I want to live my life for me. There is so much about myself that I have yet to discover, and when I am at a place that teaches me one way thought, I'm not going to find myself, I'm going to find some clone who is incapable of forming intelligent thoughts on their own.

I'm not going to sit here and say, "God told me that I need to transfer colleges" because I refuse to use God as a scapegoat or justification for my own wants. I want to transfer, therefore I will. I can't be stagnant any longer, and that's what my university has instilled in me. I honestly thought that if God wanted me to leave, I would randomly get a letter out of the blue from some university offering me a full ride and it would be 100% obvious that I needed to do that. But that's not realistic. I have to make my own choices, and if God decides he wants to play puppet master (which he doesn't do because we have free choice) then I guess I'll do whatever He leads me to do. But at this point in my life, I feel called to live for myself. I feel called to find out who I really am, not who I am told to be. I feel called to make my own decisions for my own happiness, and that isn't something I can discover by staying in the same place.