When a student steps onto a college campus for the first time, he is introduced to a plethora of different ideas, people, and culture. You're forced to make decisions you have never faced before. How you deal with them will impact you for the rest of your life. When making those decisions, one wonders how or why he came to the conclusions to which he came. Every single decision that I have made since my senior year in high school has been rooted in the inspirational teaching of my high school theology teachers and the methods that they used.

In the readings and discussions in class, I began to realize that the overall feel from the class about teaching was negative. On the contrary, my personal experiences with teachers were very positive, motivating, and inspirational. The common public view of the public of Catholic schools and the religion classes that are taught there is that the students are "spoon-fed" ideas that are not to be questioned. This could not be further from the truth in my case and my experiences with teachers at Christian Brothers College Prep High School.

My freshman and sophomore years consisted of getting familiar with the Hebrew and Christian Scrip

Mr. Delpha and I instantly connected because he listened to the same kind of music that I did, classic rock. He would play Bob Dylan, Cream, The Beatles and other rock pioneers before class everyday. And the songs that he played would surprisingly fit into the message of what he was trying to get through to us in the lesson. He would read us short stories written in Readers Digest that made perfect sense to me. The story that stuck out, though, was a story about two twins that are conceived in the mother's womb. They were talking to each other one day about how great life in the womb is and how much they loved their mother. When it came time for them to be born, they started to panic. One of them started to ask questions. "What happens after birth? Is it all over?" he said. The other replied, "Don't worry, trust in mother." "What if there is no mother, what if we just made her up!" said the doubtful one. At that remark his twin brother had disappeared. He started t!

Israel at 50 (1998, April 25). The Economist, 347. 19-20.

tures. My teacher, Mr. Buckley introduced me to a whole new way to perceive at the Bible by looking at it from different angles. He taught me that there were different ways to look at things other than what was taught to me at my Catholic grade school. We went in depth on what the readings actually meant, who wrote them, why, and the effects that it had on the culture. For example, the gospels were all written about 30 to 100 years after the birth of Christ. Each gospel has its own message. In the Gospel according to Mark, there was no resurrection of Jesus in the original version. It was left out because the entire Gospel emphasized the mystery of Christ to make us ask questions instead of give us answers. The real reason why Mr. Buckley was so effective at teaching is because he used humor all the time. We would sometimes spend a whole 50-minute class period cracking j!

When junior year came rolling around we had learned a lot about the scriptures but I still had a feeling of emptiness in my

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