Dear Millennials, Your Professor is Not God

                I still remember how it first happened. The first thing that unsettled me about public college. You see, I had been warned about the 'crazy, liberal university professor', but throughout my first few weeks of public college, I had yet to detect any alarming amounts of heresy. After all, I had gone to public high school, and surely, if going there was not enough to make me recant my Catholic faith, college should be no trouble. Right?

                Yes, I had been warned about university professors, but I was not prepared.

                Sitting in my freshmen literature class, I sat and listened to one of my professors lecture. And she seemed reasonable. And she seemed educated. And she sure as hell knew what she was talking about. But as I scribbled down notes in my notebook, a growing feeling of unease took root in me until I was raising my hand and asking:

                "But like, what are you saying?"

                My professor looked at me, a cocktail of frustration and confusion herself. This was a simple concept, why was I not grasping it?

                It was only after I left the room, my heart beating in my throat, my ears hot and head spinning that I realized where the sense of wrongness came from.

                I had just sat in a classroom and been force-fed what I realized later was modern gender theory against my will, and no one had said a word. They had let it happen.

                And what was worse----was my professor was teaching it like it was fact.

               

                Now, I'm wise enough to know now in my junior year of college that every professor teaches from a bias. Every professor. And even if a professor tries to keep politics out of the classroom, it inevitably creep in. As humans, our world-view affects so many things about how we live our lives, what we think is important, what we believe, how we act, what we love, where we dedicate our time, and what we view as progress. And as adults, whose world-views are naturally so firmly integrated into their persons for decades, it would be silly to ask professors to check all of those things at the door. But I was not prepared for those professors to present those world-views as fact, however un-Christian, however extreme they may be.

                As time went on, I became more aware of this phenomena, this sneaky indoctrination. While I'm not trying to cast the stereotype that every college professor is a crazy liberal anti-Christ seeking to corrupt the souls of innocent freshmen, while I know that most professor's intentions are far from malicious---indoctrination does happen.

                And it is subtle.

                After that English class I felt a sense of dread to return to that class every day. That professor had taken all of my deeply held convictions, the Truth about human identity, sexuality, and all that wonderful good I had gleaned from studying Theology of the Body, and tossed it aside as if it were archaic, fanciful, unintelligent, bigoted, and incorrect. She had treated what I knew to be True as if I were asserting that the Earth was the center of the solar system. In one class-period she had scrutinized me until I felt I needed to apologize for something---- something I knew not what. And she had been quite subtle about it.

                She had used words like archiac, out-dated, heteronormative, cultural, insignificant, exclusively, biased, conjecture, hypothesis, and social construct when describing my ideas, and words like

                progressive, inclusive, movement, revolution, and equality to describe hers.

                In a culture where students are conditioned to believe the person teaching them as the ultimate authority, I was automatically inclined to agree with my high-brow intellectual-type professor. After all, I didn't want to be considered retrograde. I didn't want to be the enemy of progress. I didn't want to be bigoted. To be behind the times. To be ignorant and politically incorrect.

                But the more I listened to her talk, the more everything began to unravel. In her world-view, truth is what we make it. And in my world-view, human-made truth is no truth at all.

               

                I gradually became more aware of the biases that permeate the college campus. I began to pick up on buzzwords and talking points of the modern, liberal agenda. And even though I could begin to recognize when a teacher began to pass off biases as facts, I couldn't help but keep my deep-seated annoyances. Because, as a Christian, I can pretty well assume that my ideas are in the minority on a college campus. Than in any given class-room, most of the other people are inclined to disagree with me. That's okay. I've gotten used to that. And Jesus warned us about that with His whole 'and the world will hate you' bit. But one thing I couldn't fathom about some of my professors is that they automatically assumed everyone was as liberal as they were. They assumed that everyone nursed hatred against the supposed patriarchy, who worshipped Bernie Sanders, and was a poster-child of Buzzfeed. One thing I couldn't fathom was how easily they put us Millennials into a box and expected us to live up to the stereotypes of our generation. What confounded me was how some professors assumed they could get us to jump up on board with their ideology with little resistance.

                But I soon began to realize, that I was confounding them too.

                Not every professor I have had at my liberal arts university teaches from the assumption of a liberal and oh-so-2016 world view. Not every one of my professors has been on the front-lines championing the newest fad, hot-button issue, or idea of the day. Not every one of my professors has been sallying forth into what they sincerely hold is revolutionary territory, not recognizing that absolute Truth does not change-- but most of them have. And that does not make them incompetent educators. Far from it. Most of them are truly intellectual, bright, smart, funny, compassionate people. But that doesn't make them right.

                I remember a conversation with one of my professors, the same one who force-fed me gender theory my freshmen year of college. I remember when, throughout the course of a conversation in her office, she found out I am Catholic. And Catholic because I choose to be. Not because my parents made me. Not because I had been indoctrinated as a child. But because I recognize the eternal Truth and beauty of it and actively choose to be.

                And she was silent. And she looked at me, then. With a sort of surprised awe and genuine confusion that a young, bright, Millennial girl could champion ideas she considered so unintelligent and retrograde. That I, living in a liberal hot-bed in middle-class America could care less about third-wave feminism and more about Divine Femininity. That I, a top-student in her class could care less about modern gender-theory and more about Theology of the Body.

                This information, for such a miniscule moment, rocked her world-view. Because here I was: The Other. The other she had been targeting with her lectures for months. And I was sitting in the front row of her class making A's on papers.

                I am not the only one who has faced these biases. I am not the only one who has witnessed a professor turn a lecturer's podium into a pulpit to proselytize all manner of  biased thought. I am thankful I am surrounded by a group of friends who are helping me challenge the stereotypes of Millennials. Good friends who can inspire the same sort of awe in professors. (or outrage in some cases).

                But despite all of this, I am thankful.

                My professors have broadened my political awareness. They have made me more culturally and socially conscious. They have also challenged my idea of The Other. Because it is hard for someone to be the other when you love them. It is hard for someone to be nothing more than your ideological enemy when you have laughed with them, and learned from them, and received advice from them, and yes, respected them.

                And though our professors may be wrong on some things. And though they may preach from a Gospel of culture--- they still deserve our respect. We need to respect them and obey them, but we can do that without taking every word from their mouths as capital-T Truth.

                  Render unto Caesar's what is Caesars, render unto God what is God's--- or something like that.

                 Just because a professor has a PHD, something reasonably attainable for anyone with enough drive and means, just because they have a certificate that labels them an expert in a given field of study, it does not mean they are experts at life. It does not mean they know the Truth. It does not mean they know the secret and hidden workings of the world veiled before an undergrad's eyes.

                Just because your professors may have a god-complex it does not mean they are God.

                And this was a hard lesson for me. But I have learned it well. I wanted to be intellectual. I wanted to be smart. I wanted that attractive confidence and slight arrogance of someone who is knowledgeable, cultured, and in control. But I realized that something was even more attractive--

integrity. And not compromising my values for the sake of the newest trend or scholarly conjecture.

                And so I am happy to be considered old-school. I am happy to be made out to be a fool for Christ.

                If we are going to survive in this culture that will silence us for our beliefs, we have got to be comfortable with appearing to be idiots. Bigots. Uneducated. Politically incorrect. And anything else we may deemed by popular media to be.

                Are we any of those things?

                                I would wager probably not. I would wager that we may just be right.

Because when has anyone ever really wanted to hear the Truth? We crucified Jesus for saying it.

                And we, His followers, shall be crucified for it now. But love those around you enough to speak the truth. Love them enough to be the one voice dissenting against the multitude. But a respectful dissenter. A polite dissenter. Don't be belligerent. You don't always need to come in with both guns blazing.

  But know no matter how tactfully you share the Truth, you will be unpopular. You may be mocked. You may be that kid. But someone has to be.

                Know that you have things to learn from your professors. But they have things to learn from you too. Eat the apple--- but spit out the seeds.

                We let our professors dictate so much of our lives. We let professors dictate how we spend our time. How we feel. What we study. What lengths we will go through to impress them. We let our professors dictate so much. But do not give them more authority than they are due.

                As St. Teresa of Calcutta once said:

                                "In the final analysis it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyways".

                Omnia Gratia Sunt.