I am more than my relationship with Wheaton
I attended Wheaton College (IL) from 1998 to 2002 and worked there until 2004. What I didn’t fully realize about society is there are certain worth making entities one has to anchor them self to in order to be accepted by most people. For me Wheaton College was that worth making entity (It’s the same way you’ll see schools like Colombia University advertising that they are in the city of New York). Because I have multiple disabilities and am on the autistic spectrum, anchoring myself to worth making entities was even more important than a regular person because as a person with a disability you have zero worth in this culture (certainly in Christian culture anyway). It’s almost like that one guy who got sucked out the back door of a plane and they found him holding on to a beam of the outside of the plane for dear life and he wouldn’t let go even after the plane landed and stopped.
The people at Wheaton that I had the deepest relationships with dropped out of my life when I was no longer anchored to any worth making entities. Once I lost my job at Wheaton I never found a real one and ended up fighting for scraps on the informal economy. Because these relationships didn’t get replaced I found it impossible to extricate myself from Wheaton. I haven’t fully done so even now and it’s been over 11 years since I left there.
My Wheaton degree has done nothing for me vocationally because any good it could have done gets canceled out by disability based prejudice. Because of my upbringing and Wheaton experience I still think I’m going to go to hell for thinking for myself. And the people who could hook me up with a job have dropped out of my life because I don’t have one.