My first semester of engineering, I did not purchase one course book. At $200 each, I could not justify buying a hard copy when I could scroll through online PDFs.

While online textbooks have the advantage of being free and weighing less than seven pounds, they are far from easy to read. The default print is miniscule, and zooming makes it a pain to switch from one page to another. The solution? I would not read the textbook. I took AP Physics. I was a physics master. I could figure out the problems on my own.

But I could not figure them out on my own. I wasted precious time brainstorming possible but incorrect solutions, I was too frustrated with my online textbook to skim for helpful example problems, and too intimidated by professors to go to office hours. While the experimentation may have proved fruitful if I were a research scientist, it was not the most useful as a student whose scientific intuition was almost always erroneous.

Come second semester, I had a novel idea: what if I bought the textbooks for my classes? My classes began to have open-book exams, and if a PDF was a nightmare for homework, I could only imagine how much it would slow me down on a test.

I broke down and bought the books. I realized I did not need to nor should I have struggled to craft solutions to my homework problems completely on my own. I could and should model my solutions on those who had gone before me to derive and experiment, to observe and quantify.

I worked up the courage to go to office hours, where I was relieved to realize that my professors did not expect me to understand everything already. I wasn’t able to learn everything on my own, but I didn’t have to when there were books full of examples, professors who had already mastered the subject, and students who were struggling beside me with the same material.

At the same time, I was learning that I didn’t have to figure out my faith on my own, either. I came to Notre Dame as a Protestant who made my faith my own, but perhaps a little too much my own. Some of my most meaningful moments in high school came from reading through Ecclesiastes and Job by myself; I found answers in Scripture about the meaning and meaninglessness of life and suffering. I read Paul, 1st and 2nd Samuel, and even parts of Numbers. I was basically a biblical scholar. I could form my own creed upon my interpretation of the text.

I didn’t understand why I should listen to an elderly man in Rome about my personal relationship with Christ. Jesus spoke directly to me and I to him, and I didn’t see the need for a priest to interpret or absolve. I didn’t understand why I should read an interpretation of the Bible when I could read Scripture itself. As Revelation says, he who adds to the book of life will not share in the tree of life. I was afraid that anyone who wrote about Scripture or God after the Bible was compiled was transgressing this decree.

It was not until I learned how the canon was compiled that I realized it was unreasonable to insist that the only inspired writing was in the Bible. It was not until I actually read some of the saint’s works that I realized they were not a collection of Greek gods to whom Catholics could pray, but helpful examples of how to live as God’s love through the ages.

I had been trying to answer my questions of faith on my own, yet sometimes I had ventured off in the wrong direction, wasting valuable time that could have been spent becoming more of who God wanted me to be. In the same way that I needed guidance from professors to answer questions about engineering, I needed guidance from priests, saints, and popes to answer questions about God.

As I had to surrender my false assumptions about physics to learn the truth about how matter behaved, I had to suspend my long-held beliefs about God to see him for who he truly is. I should strive for a personal relationship with Christ, but I needed to learn who Christ was from his disciples first. I needed to dethrone myself as the highest spiritual authority.

I could not lead my life in the holiest way possible if I refused to learn from those before and around me. I could never finish my engineering homework if I did not read the textbook, go to office hours, and ask my friends for help. Christ established a Church, a community of believers to grow together in truth and faith. Fellowship meant more than friendship. Salvation, like homework, is a group effort.

When I was defining my own faith, I thought I should only go to church because I wanted to. I did not see the point of fasting. I did not see much value in silence. While these (and many other) tenets did not originally seem appealing or effective, I needed to suspend my disbelief to understand why the Church believes they are so important. Though I should still ask questions of my faith as I asked questions in engineering, I should not try to answer them completely on my own. I am a student, and a student needs a teacher—or in my case, many teachers.

Erin Thomassen is a junior studying mechanical engineering. She lives in Pasquerilla East Hall, and can be contacted at ethomass@nd.edu.