Customer Reviews

Fish Out of Water

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a father of a daughter bound for college, I was interested in Abby Nye's chronicle about the current campus environment. She mixes her strong, personal beliefs with some courage to create a survival guide for students whose religious beliefs are at odds with the university. If you are like me (20+ years post college), you won't like what you read about today's campus, but you will be grateful for Abby's attempt to stand up and be heard. At the end of this, I realize Abby Nye's approach is earning for her what each parent should want for their child; a real education with intellectual honesty.
This book should be read by any student preparing for campus life.

Abby Nye writes intently and with clarity. Her real-world anecdotes are entertaining, and I love her "take no prisoners" attitude with the politically correct crowd. She well illustrates how Christians can stand up against the bias and bigotry so often coloring liberal's treatment of Christianity.

I particularly liked the encounter with an English professor that graded one of Abby's paper low because he disagreed with her position on the issue she wrote about. The assignment had specifically stated that students should write from their own viewpoint. Abby took the professor to task with the head of the department and achieved grudging respect for the Christian view.

Another amusing story was the description of an instructor earnestly urging students not to use B.C. in dates, because the abbreviation for "Before Christ" "could be offensive." Apparently this academic is ignorant of the fact that the Gregorian calendar system _is_ based on the birth of Jesus Christ!

The wisdom in this book isn't only valuable for prospective college students. The accounts here will give you great encouragement in defending the faith at work, in social situations, and in the ongoing culture war.

This book is a great read. First-time author Abby Nye is on the front lines in the culture war, and she sees it where combat is the fiercest: on the campus of a secular university. While Abby went into college prepared for a change, she at times found herself overwhelmed by relativism, nihilism, postmodernism, and all the other -isms that are prevalent in today's anti-God, anti-Christ, liberal universities.

I appreciate the fact that Abby has remained faithful throughout college and has had a great time doing it. Far too often, Christian books follow a familiar pattern: "I grew up in the church, but then I fell away and partied for a while, but then I got serious about my faith again and things are awesome now." While I don't question the sincerity of people who have walked this path and want to tell the story about it, I can remember reading those kinds of stories as a younger guy and thinking, "Well if they got away with partying for a while and turned out okay, why can't I just do that too?"

Instead of that approach, Abby gives great perspective on how to live out your faith on campus. How do I stay away from sex and drinking and drugs? What do I do on Friday night when it seems like everyone else is out getting blitzed and hooking up? Where can I find friends who have similar beliefs? What do I do if a prof is trashing my faith in class? Abby combines thorough research with well-placed anecdotes to offer a plan of attack as a student approaches his or her freshman year in college. It is obvious that Abby is passionate about the subject matter, and that she wants to make an impact in the lives of the students around her.

I put this right up there with J. Budziszewski's How to Stay Christian in College as a book that can help prepare young people for the rigors of college. Give a copy of each to every high school senior you know!

As a high school teacher working with many Christian students, this has been an excellent resource to prep my students for the realities of campus life. I am so thankful for examples like Abby Nye who confront real issues like tolerance, indoctrination, and the politically correct. It's refreshing when there's so much apathy in the classroom. I also appreciate the fact that Abby acknowledges the fear of being different, but she tackles this fear head-on through confidence in Christ. This book has been so helpful that I've recommended it both to my students and in my own book, JumpStart Your Future: A Guide for the College-Bound Christian.

Abby's book is "must reading" for any Christian parent contemplating sending his/her child off to a secular university. As a Butler Alumnus (B.A., 1978), I was saddened (though not really surprised) to see how narrow-minded and intolerant Butler has become in the nearly 30 years since I attended classes there. My wife and I discovered the hard way the vast difference between the secular and sectarian educational experience. Our oldest daughter attended a large, state school and soon abandoned whatever Christian moorings she had prior to matriculating there. Given that experience, we convinced our two younger children to attend a Christian school, and their Christian worldviews were strengthened and nurtured greatly during their 4 years there. I am familiar with the "salt and light" argument for sending one's Christian child to a secular school, but I fear most young people simply lack the spiritual fortitude to resist the pressures they'll meet during their impressionable college years. I admire Abby Nye's strength and courage to meet those challenges, but feel too many of our young kids will become spiritual casualties from such an experience.

I just finished Fish Out of Water by Abby Nye. In this book the author discussed her experiences as a Christian student in a secular college. The topics she explored were tolerance, indoctrination and the political correct. The author supplied examples of her everyday occurrences while on campus. The use of emails written throughout the book showed that she was not alone and other students on the campus had the same difficulties.

I especially liked the part when her professor gave Abby a low mark on a paper because he disagreed with her viewpoint because she had written about her Christian views on the subject. He had said that they should write from their own viewpoint. She was upset about the grade and pursued it further. She never did get a better grade, but the professor viewed her differently in the future.

I asked my mother about her experiences in college. My mother attended a Catholic college and she does not remember having the same issues that Abby faced. I feel that this book would be very useful when entering college. I am aware that the information discussed is based on the opinions of the author and some people may not agree with her ideas. I am presently in high school and I will pass this book on to one of my Christian friends who is attending college in the fall. This was an impressive book. Although the book was written in 2005, the information is still very useful. Very good job Abby!

I generally agree with most of the positive reviews, but also think that Aaron Krerowicz and H. Laack have some valid points. A weakness of the book is that Ms. Nye fails to make distinctions in topics, namely,
(1) Christianity (God reconciling people to himself through the death and resurrection of His Son Christ Jesus);
(2) Theological opinions held by some Christians (e.g., young-earth creationism); and
(3) General conservative (classical liberal to somewhat libertarian) political opinions (e.g., the civil right to use arms in self-defense).

The common thread is that each of these is often greeted with hostility or contempt by many professors and (even more often, in my observation) administrators; a few of which can be downright nasty and personal in their attacks. That said, the book provides many examples of how to *respond and behave* when an instructor ceases to instruct and begins to indoctrinate into his or her worldview. Her advice, although directed at Christians, is usually also applicable to any honest student.

I ordered the book, Fish out of Water, for my granddaughter who is graduating from high school. Reading a good part of it I am appauled by what is going on in our universities. The book is an excellent preparation for students going to university. Every student headed for university needs this heads up preparation so as to not to be caught unawares and stumble and fall.

This type of book is great for those who enter college and have a personal Christian faith. For those who don't, they do not understand the term secular from our viewpoint. If you think about it, most agnostics live a life that is not much different than an atheist. Back in the 80's I went to the University of Minnesota as a Christian, and a book like this would have been useful. Sadly, I think it is even more needed in this ever more amoral culture where right and wrong are subjective.

To start, I want to vigorously applaud Abby Nye for the hard work and dedication a project such as writing "Fish out of Water" demanded. I am most impressed with her tenacity and with her passion regarding the subject at hand. If I did not respect the book, I would not bother to write an in-depth review. Very impressive!

That being said, I must agree with a previous reviewer, who stated: "As a graduate of Butler University myself, I can't help but feel deeply unsettled by many of the claims made by Nye in regards to her education experiences. Perhaps she was well-intentioned, but many of the incidents she recounts strike me as misrepresentations at best, gross exaggerations at worst." I, too, am a Butler student (I, however, am a current student and not a graduate of Butler like the quoted reviewer) and though Nye and I never met, we shared two years on campus together.

While reading, I often found myself wondering about Nye's claim that Butler is a secular campus. In a sense it is: there is no one "official" religion of the campus. Rather, what I question is her use of the term "secular." It seems that Nye's definition of the term would be more like "anti-Christian" than "lack of an official campus religion." Perhaps when Nye realized that Butler is not a solely Christian university, when she realized Butler _is_ accepting of many, many religions other than her own, she concluded it was a secular university. That doesn't quite add up logically, but I can see how one could draw such a faulty inference if they had been raised in a good Christian household by good Christian parents and educated by a good Christian school. In reality, Butler is home to many different religious factions - Christianity and atheism included.

I guarantee many of the stories she recalls did not happen as she rather convincingly portrays. I am sure she thinks she accurately described the situations, but I cannot believe many of her claims. I find it much more likely that Nye, being a naïve freshman like we all once were, perceived these events differently from how they really happened. To quote that previous reviewer again: "Perhaps Nye took Christ's Sermon on the Mount a little too much to heart, and in her desire to feel hers was the Kingdom of Heaven, needed first to believe herself persecuted for righteousness' sake." This sounds very accurate. Like so many other authors, Christian and non-theist alike, Nye has an unfortunate propensity to tell only her side of the story. This is probably not conscious, again due to her naiveté as a freshman. Furthermore, she wrote the book her junior year, two years after many of the horror stories she tells from her freshman year. I would not be surprised at all to find out that the two years gap served to exaggerate the injustices. Once again, I doubt this is conscious. Nye writes very passionately and I do not believe she could have consciously told her tale insincerely.

I found myself having the same problems with "Fish out of Water" as I did with other supposed Christian classics: if the world really was the way Nye (or other Christian authors) perceived it, then they would have fantastic points and their books would be revolutionary. Unfortunately, the world is not as simple and straightforward as the authors make it out to be, and thus the holes in their arguments become quite apparent. Ironically, I have the same problem with many atheist authors: they set up a version of reality that isn't accurate and then conclude their views based on that false reality. It drives me nuts on both sides of the argument.

Having gone through very similar experiences on the same campus, I can definitely understand where she is coming from, but I cannot agree with her conclusions at all. In fact, I think someone could write a very similar book based off of very similar experiences, keeping the same title, but changing the subtitle to "Surviving and thriving as a non-theist on a religious campus."

My first and probably biggest problem with "Fish out of Water" came in the first chapter, where Nye discusses how Welcome Week should really be called Indoctrination Week. In her own words, this is how she perceived her first days on campus: "The message of Welcome Week was unmistakably simple and straightforward: You will be part of the group. You will think like the group, act like the group, approve of the group, and agree with the group. No discussion. No disagreement." Having endured Butler's Welcome Week festivities, I cannot fathom how she perceived such a meaning from the activities. Personally, I found them boring and a waste of my time, but I never felt insulted or threatened by any of it. Moreover, if such a message truly was "unmistakable," then how come not everybody perceived the activities in the same manner?

Nye continues: "Under the mask of fun and games, it is really indoctrination to tolerance and diversity. The message to students is to appreciate all people, but it doesn't take long to see that there is an important clause attached to that phrase: appreciate all people as long as they agree with us. Dissenters will not be tolerated." Again, my personal experiences at the same campus and from the same activities have led me to the exact opposite conclusion. I have never experienced or witnessed any religious discrimination. I would not doubt that it's out there, but it certainly does not dominate the campus like Nye implies. Once again, I believe Nye genuinely _thinks_ she is right. Unfortunately for her, that's just simply not the case: Butler is not as anti-Christian and suppressive as she wants it to be.

One thing I really did like about Nye's book was how she very maturely handled situations in which her beliefs were under attack, and further how she encouraged others who found themselves in similar situations to deal with the problems responsibly. If all religious debate followed her suggestions, there would be much less hostility on both sides. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with her religious sentiments, her concluding thoughts on each chapter frequently are very helpful and would only help if implemented in our own daily lives.