In my time at UNI I have found that maintaining spiritual well-being has been crucial to both my overall college experience as well as my individual journey through life. With this being said, I have also found that truly nurturing my spiritual well-being has taken disciplined research before joining any religious or spiritual group. This was a lesson that I had to learn the hard way during my freshman year of college when I was so eager to get involved that I didn’t stop and learn the core values of the religious groups I was joining. Rather than fostering positive spiritual growth, I contributed to my own religious harm and stopped any maintenance or growth of my spiritual well-being altogether.  

Thankfully, I was not alone in my struggle and quickly found others with similar negative on campus religious experiences. In some ways, these experiences allowed me to not only understand the consequences of my own misconceptions of religious groups that I had blindly joined, but also acknowledge the harm that had been done in a religious context before I had arrived at college. This allowed me to become more objective in how I perceived my own negative religious experiences and more specifically how I wanted to move forward from there. 

College is a time in life where many are first able to acknowledge the negative spiritual and religious experiences that they have had both in the past and the present. 

This can make college both an exploratory and vulnerable time for spiritual well-being.  Despite the vulnerability in exploring, there are ways to explore religion and spirituality safely and effectively. Acknowledging that the beliefs of varying campus religious and spiritual groups may not support your beliefs and identity can be a good first step. Along with this, it is important to note the importance of asking questions about values and goals of a community, this can seem like a daunting or blunt task but it can be important to maintaining personal wellbeing while exploring. Similar to joining other groups, it is important to build a diverse support network that comes from a few different communities which can provide assurance that if there becomes a need to leave a religious group there will still be existing support outside of that.

Aside from taking personal precautions before joining various religious groups, it is important to know that there are resources on campus that can provide support. It is possible to look up different student organizations at UNI to learn more about them before attending all together. If a harmful experience does occur at a religious or spiritual student organization the UNI counseling center is also available to help work through those experiences. Along with these resources it is also important to note that spiritual well being can be maintained through other means that don’t require a communal element. This is important to keep in mind, especially if a break from religious or spiritual groups becomes necessary to preserve the well-being of oneself. 

Description: College is a time where students explore different interests and engage in community activities.