"When I Was Your Age..."

mezzomom
Sat, 30 Oct 2004 14:32:50 +0000

I’m with Jamimom…I was the girl that my friends’ parents wished their kids would emulate. When I was a sophomore in HS, we moved to Chicago, and a high school that was at least 3 times larger than the one I’d come from. It was hard to find a niche in such a large school, so my closest friends were from my church. I got caught up in a very legalistic approach to life…if it wasn’t illegal, it was probably a sin!

Although I have very fond memories of the good (wholesome!) times I had with my friends, I remain forever grateful to three professors at my college. I was a pre-ministerial student, and one of my religion professors, my German professor, and one of my history professors made me their “project” one semester, hoping to bust up my safe little box and prepare me for the real world where shades of grey exist. I was too naive to realize what was going on, and when they assigned me extra reading (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, etc.), I thought it was the norm. I ended up breaking down in the middle of a final, an oral examination with my German professor and couldn’t continue with the assigned exam. But he spent hours with me (and called over my religion and history professor) to help me to start synthesizing all the new ideas I had been exposed to. It was truly a new beginning for me, because I was finally open to ideas and new thoughts, rather than viewing them as “the enemy.”

So my “when I was your age” stories usually are very boring, but I’m always looking for opportunities to expose my daughter to new ways of thinking. And, I’m an unabashed cheerleader for LACs because of the care, concern, and education I received from my professors, in and out of the classroom.