Whitworth, apostate generator
“I used to be a Christian.” A smirk. “Until I came to Whitworth.”
It’s a very common line at Whitworth. It’s graced countless opinion columns, each time pretending to be a shocking statement.
But it’s something that’s happened time and time again to Whitworth Student after Whitworth student. Some, to be clear, have gone the other way — actually becoming religious in college.
But most of the movement among students seems to be away from the religion referred to in their brochures.
Personally, I survived Whitworth with my religion intact (and, maybe, ultimately stronger.) . Still, my question is: How does Whitworth, a Christian university, end up creating so many non-Christians?
After processing for some time, I believe these are many of the factors. Naturally, I can’t — and won’t — speak for your individual experience. But this is something, I think, worth exploring.
College, where the parents aren’t.
College is a time of solidifying your own identity. Of separating oneself from your old life, your old church, your old parents, and, sometimes, your old beliefs.
So it isn’t surprising that college — even Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty College in all likelihood — leads to a certain percentage rejecting the philosophy they started with.
So much of the Christianity people come to Whitworth armed with is the flannelgraph kind. Fuzzy. Simple. And able to fall off under the slightest breeze.
The parental protection is gone in college. You’re out of the womb and the umbilical cord’s been cut. Instead, you’re in a world of questions, bright and scary.
Whitworth, to its credit, tends to encourage those questions.
But people begin to run into knotty questions about their religion, without having the theological underpinnings or confidence to answer them.
Questions like:
Whitworth Forum: The feedback thread.
Sometimes, people will have thoughts or ideas about how the forum should be run. We encourage this type of feedback. The forum, after all, is premised on openness. But we do not want it cluttering up other threads.
From now on, any feedback should go in this thread. Put feedback in other threads, and it, most likely will be deleted or moved.
Thank you. And you can look forward to the forum continuing to thrive next year.
-Daniel
3 Things Whitworth Should have Taught You About the World Outside the Pinecone Curtain
Congrats, seniors! Six and a grisly half out of ten of you (65%) will be moving back in with your parents after graduation. Juniors, the clock is ticking. Are you scared?
In the year since I was graduated, I have learned about a trillion times as much about the real world as I learned at Whitworth. So here are three basic tips I’m going to assume they didn’t teach you well enough.
1. Don’t be afraid to ask (for help, for knowledge…)
People will generally like you more if they get to do you a favor. So, ask the career center, professors; counselors. This is self-explanatory, but I didn’t take full advantage of this excellent resource when I was at Whitworth.
Ask your friends: Make it common knowledge on Facebook that you’re looking for a particular kind of work. If your friends, their families, and their families’ connections don’t know anybody looking to hire someone like you, I’ll be surprised. Just don’t beg pathetically or anything.
Ask professionals: Request an interview with a local person who has the job you wish you had. How did they get there? What surprised them along the way? Is it really lonely at the top?
2. Know your strengths: (technology, integrity…)
You are part of Generation Y, and people have assumptions about you.
Some are negative: They think you are not loyal to companies (statistically speaking, you may work 11-14 jobs in your life) and you prefer to ask what your company can do for you; not what you can do for your company.
Some are positive, so know your strengths: They assume you are more tech-savvy than they are (after all, you’ve spent 20,000 hours online already). You can bring new ideas. No more ‘business as usual.’ Stress that you are an ethical person. That is hugely important. These days it’s actually becoming cool to be ethical. So keep your copy of Boondock Saints hidden away.
Don’t believe me about the negative assumptions? Peruse some contributions to Brazen Careerist, the top career site for people our age.
3. Social media is incredibly important to understand. (facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, youtube, flickr, feedburner/google reader…)
Facebook has made recent changes that allow businesses to connect and interact with their fans/followers/potential customers. If you can think of a creative way to make that work for your company, you are a valuable asset.
Twitter is a site you probably don’t understand. If you’re like Daniel Walters and any of a myriad of other people who don’t ‘get it’ yet, don’t feel bad. I can return and write a quick twitter guide, discuss in the comments, or have a facebook conversation about it. I’m happy to advise.
LinkedIn: If you don’t have a professional page on this site (basically an online resume) you’re on a ride into the fail-zone. Get on it!
RSS reader: Check out Feedburner or if you have a Google account, Google Reader. Subscribe to CNN or BBC news, Mashable, The Onion, all your friends’ blogs, Google Alerts for your name etc. The list goes on!
I currently have 49 feeds in my Google Reader. I’d never take the time to visit each site, but with an RSS reader I know any time something new is posted. Then I can read a quick summary and decide whether I want to read the whole thing.
Network, network, network. Join a professional association, find meet ups and events. Stay connected with your college friends. Do these things, O graduate, and leave a comment about how you’re preparing for Life Beyond. Fellow alums – what advice would you add? Did I miss anything?
An UpsideDown Cake Defense of My Favorite Ethos
The curtain goes up. The lights are dim. A small figure paces…and speaks.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to speak with you about a real problem in today’s world. It causes orphans to starve to death. It causes pretty girls to cry in front of crowds. It causes pretty guys to buy loose shorts because they are afraid to show off the proof of God that is evident in that subtle curve where backbone and pelvis fuse.
It causes those who write well to try and tone it down so they won’t annoy others. It causes those who speak well to speak quietly. It causes those gifted with good ears to shout before they listen. It causes guys who shower with the bathroom window flung wide to throw rocks at girls in frosted glass skirts.
It causes throwing rocks.”
At this point the figure stops and stares intensely at the audience. The voice is low.
“It created rocks.
In such a world, as a far greater questioner than I postulated, was there not possibly a need, somewhere, sometime, then, for rocks to be thrown?
Perhaps.”
At this point the figure stops. The audience realizes that their eyes have adjusted. The speaker is female.
“And yet I cannot help but disagree.
For I remember being innocent. I remember when rocks were fossils. I remember when sticks were something to carry and not something to stab other people with. I remember crying and getting over it as soon as I was apologized to. I remember not understanding the concept of grudges.
Sadly, all good things much come to an end, in this world. Mustn’t they? For the Age of Reason began, for me, then: a time dominated by Logos.
And I excelled. And I ignored my Ethos.
For in the age of Reason, Ethos is not only discounted, she is mocked. And thus is born her sister.
Pathos.
The logistician’s least favorite way of arguing, and the dramatist’s least favorite way of pulling strings.
And yet I am afraid it is to Her that I must appeal.”
The audience realizes that the small figure can see them, then – but they do not know what gives them this impression. It is unnerving. She paces. She paces with the haunting determination of something dead.
“Forum Community, I cannot and I shall not stand for the kind of ignorance that I have heard expressed here and elsewhere.
Good for you, Whitworth. You went shoeless to raise awareness. You sold cacti to raise awareness. And T-shirts. You sold so many things this year it was dizzying.
But there were rocks thrown, too.
I shan’t bring up the most obvious one, nor make the victim a bloody shirt to base my revolution on. No, my people, les Miserables, tried that a time ago. We learned. Never again.
Instead I have another.
As Jack S. Lewis asked, why are there rocks? Perhaps The Great I AM saw in His infinite wisdom that there would be need of things hard enough to smash skulls with.
And then Cain acted against his brother. And the world shuddered. And the course of history changed. And the coming of The Christos was delayed.
How long, my sisters and brothers?
How long before we put down our rocks…and pick up our crosses?”
The lights rise abruptly. It is a girl with wild hair and a cap pulled down over her eyes. She wears large sunglasses and keeps her head pointed at the floor. Still she paces. She paces. She trips. She falls.
The audience hears the sharp intake of breath and a cry. Barely discernable.
She waits.
They do not move.
She rises. She paces. She turns her back on them. She laughs to herself.
“It’s not like I honestly expected you to come and help me up. After all, you are just an audience.”
Whitworth Community.
This stone is on your doorstep. Will you let it in? Or will it have to pick the locks and enter by force?
The world was not meant to be so broken.
And it will not remain so within the reach of my arm.
Will you join me?”
Lights out. Curtain falls. Lights up. Audience exits.
Silence.
Obituary Page
Well, now.
A whole new swath of you are graduating.
Use the comment section below to write an obituary of your college career. Talk about what you loved and what you didn’t. Talk about your successes and your regrets. Talk about the RealLife Afterlife, and whether you’re excited or apprehensive.
You wouldn’t know
In the massive discussion of the Vagina Monologues below, Dr. McPherson raised an interesting matter. Since him and I were both of male gender, were we really qualified to judge The Vagina Monologues as a play?
It’s that implied question of criticism that permeates academia: the question of how important identity and experience are when we are judging our surroundings.
Can I talk about black issues if I’m white? Can I talk about gay issues if I’m straight? Can I talk about the AARP if I’m twenty-three? Can an old pretentious guy like A.O. Scott judge a movie like “Space Chimps,” if he’s *clearly* not the intended audience?
A large part of this goes back the notion of identity. To many in academia, ‘Identity’ — a few pieces of census data — are the most important part about who you are.
If I’m black, my entire life is consumed with my blackness. If I’m gay, my entire essence is gay. Not only that, but it immediately makes me an unassailable expert on these topics…right?
This is the same type of thinking that leads a person who took a two-week trip to South America to believe he or she automatically knows more about how to solve South American problems than a person who’s been deeply studying the issues for years, but has never shelled out the $400 for a round trip ticket to go.
Experience, in this mindset, trumps everything.
To me, such thinking shuts down debate. It’s a matter of Ethos trumping Logos - “Why should I have to explain myself to you. I just KNOW. I am, after all, an expert.”
There are several fallacies inherent in that thinking.
First is the notion that there’s a complete unity of experience within a certain demographic. To do so ignores the fact that we’re not just the part of one demographic.
We’re a part of multiple ones: wealth, class, religion, race, gender, philosophy, region, entertainment exposure.
Second is the fallacy that experience always leads to equal conclusions.
People with the exact same experiences can often come to multiple conclusions. I can find Whitworthian women who found The Vagina Monologues compelling, and some who find it pretentious and silly, and still others who find it horrifying…but there’s a bigger philosophical aspect here.
The notion that our beliefs, our actions, and our creed are our everything is the sum total of nature and nurture. We are the effect of a cause. The world is the stimulus, and we are the mindless response.
From a purely naturalist perspective, that’s the only way to look at the world. Of course, with this philosophy there’s no such thing as morality. With no such thing as “choice” we can no more blame a serial killer for serial killing than we can blame a rock from falling when dropped. It’s the result of immutable scientific laws. (Of course, so is our outrage)
I however believe in free will, which by its very nature is an unscientific, downright magical belief. It’s a belief that we can, somehow, defy the laws of cause and affect. That we can come to conclusion ourselves.
Thus, I believe that we can break free of the philosophy of our surroundings and experience. We are not lashed to the mast of our identity.
Otherwise, of course, the whole effort of seeking knowledge and truth is utterly pointless.
And even if our identities make up the majority of who we are, unique the perspective we bring to an argument is just as valuable. I bring a dude’s perspective to judging the Vagina Monologues. Sure, I’m not Ensler’s intended audience, but what makes my perspective any less valuable, or even correct, because of the inherent fact that I’m male?
I don’t have personal experience with many of the issues involved, but because of that, I can analyze in a different way. Personal experience can taint and bias one’s perspective – as well as crystallize it.
The “You wouldn’t know – you wouldn’t understand-” belief is a common one – no, an understandable one. But that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to teach me or help me understand. And I’ll help you understand my perspective as well.
That, not the competition to whose backstory is more pertinent to the topic, is more important. Where we should go and who you should become is always more important to talk about than who you are or where you’ve been.