Editor’s Note: 50 Cents is a weekly article where a M.C. staffer will sit with a sign reading “Interviews 50 cents” and wait to see what happens, gleaning the stories of those who sit down, in attempts to create a fuller picture of those at UMaine. The idea is derived from a TV series, which aired on ABC and PBS in the 1990s and early 2000s called “Interviews 50 Cents.”
Age: 24
Major: Theology and Catalytics
Hometown: St. Louis, Missouri
Before Ellen Klein spent a year living in monastery, religion was just a distant concept, she practiced catholicism with her family; it was her major at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
But then at the foothills of the swiss alps, there was silence.
In the small secluded town, in the small streams and the town’s only grocery store, she found peace, a time to be with her own thoughts a time to start praying, and eventually, a time to be with God.
Klein is now working for Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), a national organization, which helps college students grow in their relationship with God. The Catholic missionary group sends recent college graduates like 24-year-old Klein to universities like the University of Maine. Here she works with the Newman Center, UMaine’s Catholic church located on College Avenue.
“I just really wanted to give other college students the same opportunity I had to just grow so much beyond classes but in friendships and also, I’m a catholic missionary, so also, in their relationship with God,” Klein said.
Religion hadn’t always been so central for Klein, however. By her third year in college she felt distant from her major of theology and catalytics. She wasn’t experiencing religion and she considered changing her major.
“My first year I’d go to mass because my friends we’re going to mass. I called it positive peer pressure. My friends are going I’ll go,” Klein said.
Yet when she decided to study abroad in Austria she learned to take time to feel silence.
“It was the first time I ever really prayed, I experienced God for the first time in my life. When it’s silent, I didn’t have a cell phone, there was Internet, but it was slow, when all those things were taken away from me I had to experience just being with people. I guess silence in the sense that there weren’t a lot people around.”
She learned to ski, she sang on the steps from “The Sound of Music,” she started praying.
“[I] really could hear God speak to me. Being able to take away all those distractions,” Klein said. “I wasn’t as busy as I was, just having that time to pray, I just realized God is real and I can have a relationship with him, and he speaks to me. It’s hard to sometimes explain what that’s like.”
She figured out, “studying and experiencing it are different things.”
She returned to school, kept her major, graduated and spent two years in Maryland working for FOCUS. On Aug. 20 she came to UMaine.
“I love college students and I love the aspect of college that it’s a time for growth. You’re making big life decisions in college. It’s also such a time to hold on and learn about your beliefs but also really form your beliefs,” Klein said.
During her two months in Maine, Klein enjoys being located close to small cities like Bangor and Portland as well as National Parks.
She’s also been appreciating Mainer humor.
“Here there’s a certain sense of humor I enjoy being around. I just feel like I laugh when I’m around them. It’s they way you interact with each other,” she said. “It’s like you’re friends but you’re making fun of each other, but you can tell you love each other.”
When Klein works with UMaine students she hopes they can enjoy their college years. She sometimes looks at a bracelet her friend gave her, it reminds her of a motto she holds close.
“Live in the moment.
“Don’t get so wrapped up in trying to do everything,” Klein explains. “Take time to relax, take time for silence, that’s a big one for me. And definitely get involved in things, especially things that build you up. Those communities that are really going to help you form who you’re going to be.”
Klein hopes young people can feel inspired to make a change. She hopes her work can help make that change.
“The world just needs good young people. If the young aren’t going to do it, who will? We need to grow as human beings, to make the world a better place,” Klein said. “We’re not just the future of the world. We are the world. We are in it.”