How academics got easier for me
I loved the college I was attending. It was perfect in every way: an amazing campus, wonderful professors, abundant opportunities, and deep, meaningful friendships.
After my sophomore year, however, I felt the need to transfer to another school. My original school was for people with a shared religious background, and we were expected to live by the same set of Christian values. I loved the school because of these values, but felt I needed space to find out who I really was.
I transferred to two different schools, and although each had great aspects and I got good grades, I struggled with overburdened note-taking and studying for exams, and I never felt like I fit in. So, in my spring quarter, I transferred back to the original school. I was so grateful to be back!
I also returned with a huge desire to get to know God better. This led me to take an intensive two-week class to learn more about God and healing the summer before my senior year. It was given by an authorized Christian Science teacher and was an exhilarating and eye-opening experience. I learned how to pray more effectively, and I gained a more expansive, mountaintop view of God as all powerful, always with us, and guiding us each step of the way.
I relied on my notes and felt I couldn’t succeed without them.
The first day of this class, our teacher told us, “No notes.” I panicked! In school, I had always been a chronic note-taker. The quantity of notes I took was huge and overwhelming and led to studying and exam-taking that were full of fear. Still, I relied on my notes and felt I couldn’t succeed without them.
So when this teacher told us we couldn’t write anything down, I figured I might as well just pack up and go home. But he assured us that if we listened carefully with an open heart and mind, we would always have the ideas unfold to us as we needed them. Well, I sat on the edge of my chair for two weeks and listened with all my heart. I trusted our teacher’s assurance.
During this time, I came to understand more fully that God, who is divine Mind, is intelligence itself, and therefore the only source of intelligence. And as God’s creation, I reflected this source. I learned more about what Mary Baker Eddy says in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Mind is not necessarily dependent upon educational processes. It possesses of itself all beauty and poetry, and the power of expressing them. Spirit, God, is heard when the senses are silent. We are all capable of more than we do. The influence or action of Soul confers a freedom, which explains the phenomena of improvisation and the fervor of untutored lips” (p. 89).
In Christian Science Sunday School, I’d already learned at a very early age that Mind, God, gives us the ideas we need and that I could listen for and hear these ideas. In the past, whenever I’d needed help, I’d turned to God and gotten quick, clear, practical answers that I’d followed. Having had these experiences, I’d learned to listen for the ideas of divine Mind and to trust the ideas that came. I began to realize that I could do this in school, too.
My senior year, I went to each class and listened carefully and with discernment. Then, I wrote just a few notes capturing the ideas that seemed most important, feeling led by God to hear and note what I needed. The key concepts began to jump out at me. And the fear of being personally responsible for taking notes greatly diminished. My grades improved, and finals were so much less burdensome and stressful. I had learned to listen and trust that the one perfect Mind would give me the ideas I needed.
This experience of getting to know God has been a strong foundation on which to base my whole life, and I’m still learning, growing, and demonstrating this very practical relation we all have to a loving God!
