Prepping Your Faith for School

Hi everyone, and happy Sunday! I wanted to write a short post about taking your faith with you to college especially for people going to college for the first time.

For those of you who don't know, I grew up going to Catholic school my whole life, and when you're brought up that way, you don't realize how lucky you are to be surrounded by people who support your faith all the time. until you no longer have that. When you go to a big school it isn't that there aren't people to share your faith with, but finding those people is up to you. There are people from all walks of life and many different religions that will enlighten you and open your eyes to many different perspectives. You will also meet people who have no faith at all. However, when you go from being surrounded by faith support to being surrounded by people who don't share in your faith, it is easy to forget to keep up with your faith.

When I first came to school I didn't realize how easy it would be to get "too busy" to go to church. In college, its really common for people to schedule meetings or plan to do all their homework on Sunday's so you can easily overbook yourself, and going to church can fall through the cracks. Considering this is probably your first Sunday at college, stop reading this, open a new tab, and find a church in your school's area. Go to the church's website and find mass times for yourself and plan to go.

If you don't know other people to church with yet, don't worry. Go alone for the first few Sunday's and begin to see familiar faces. If you feel really uncomfortable going alone, ask around. I have taken friends who aren't Catholic or friends that haven't been to mass in years with me to church and both you and your friend will get something out of it.

Another piece of advice I want to offer for  freshmen or anyone who doesn't feel like they have quite figured out their faith at school is to get involved in your church. Freshmen year I joined a bible study through St. Paul's at IU and it was probably one of the best things for me. I didn't become best friends with anyone in my group and it didn't become my whole life, but I did gain a huge benefit from joining. It forced me to dedicate an hour per week to God outside of just going to church on Sunday. It made me see other insights to God through other people, and it added 10 more familiar faces to see and sit by when I went to mass on Sunday.

Joining this small bible study was also the beginning of my growing confidence in leading the bible study I lead now that has grown my faith even greater while being a college student. Faith is not something that should be put on the when you go to college. If you begin to set it aside or forget about it, you may not notice right away but midway through the semester you will feel that you are missing something extremely important and that will be your relationship with God. College isn't easy, it is challenging and you aren't designed to carry all of your burdens alone, so you need God to help you. You need Him to lean on, so be proactive in searching him out at school.

Thanks for reading! Have a great semester! Emma xx