Being a high schooler means dedicating yourself to others. Your grades are to please your parents; the clubs and activities you are in are to satisfy the picky colleges you are applying to; the sports you do are for the name of the school. It’s like having a dedication page, but your whole life is an entire novel dedicated to anybody but you. However, some students have defied that norm by doing one thing: believing.

“Having a faith is knowing what you believe in and being able to apply that to your life,” Hyyaan Khan, junior, said. “Religion is just knowing the basics and still learning more. I think my faith has been the same, but I learn more about it. It gives you that sense of importance.”

The guidance and direction Islam offers believers is the heart of Khan’s faith. He has practiced Islam all his life and has grown to follow the religion’s rules and to appreciate his faith.

“I think it’s all valid, I follow it, and I apply it to my life,” Khan said. “It gives you a sense of purpose and knowing what you’re working for.”

Such a feeling of meaning is what guides the idea of faith, according to believers.

“A sense of identity [is the most enjoyable part],” said Yoav Margalit, senior, who practices the Jewish faith. “I’m not being anti-other religions at all, because other religions definitely have their perks. I’ve noticed that many Christians, and some Muslims, don’t have as much of a sense of identity because there are so many types of Christianity. I’m not saying that each type of Christianity doesn’t have its own identity, it certainly does. But there is one type of Judaism, and you pick and choose from that what you want to observe. Here’s what you’re given, and you get to choose A, B, C, or all the above.”

The choices of religion Margalit has picked to believe in ultimately created his own faith, making it individualistic to his wants, he said. Nina Skowyra, junior, who is Catholic, also has her own personal reasons for choosing her faith.

“My faith is personal to me, as it is to everyone. I like to think about it every day, just in the little things and not necessarily the huge moments of my life,” Skowyra said. “With faith and religion, you can know that it’s okay to talk to God on your own time, and it just helps you figure things out personally. It’s important to have religion in your life, and it’s important to make it your own. So that’s what I’m striving to do, to make it my own.”

When growing up, parents have a high influence on the religion of their children, according to Huffington Posts’ website, but there comes a time when students choose to put the power of faith in their own hands to shape.

“When I was little, it was my grandma who pushed my faith,” Skowyra said. “She was the one who pushed us to go to church every week. It really reinforced the importance of religion to me. I had always gone [to Polish church] with my family because I was raised learning the religion in Polish. Seeing as the way we were taught [was] very strict and traditional, I think me, along with others in my class, were very turned off towards religion.”

Skowyra’s hard start to her faith, however, has not made a dent to her faith now.

Difficulties in religion are a universal concept to those who believe. During the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from morning until dusk. Khan and his family wake up at 4am to eat and complete their morning prayer, but the school day is what he finds most challenging.

“Fasting is definitely challenging, because I don’t just want to sit around and do nothing,” Khan said. “I had people come up to me and ask if I want food while I was fasting, and I just responded saying, ‘No, I can’t. I’m fasting.’ They’re just wondering how I do this all day.”

Khan’s faith started at a very young age and has only grown over the years. He attributes that to his parents, and more specifically, his mom, but now his faith is his own.

“My mom started pushing for us to become more intact with our faith,” Khan said. “She started all her kids off reading the Qur’an, so we all understood more about the religion at a young age. I started when I was in kindergarten. My parents don’t want me to drift off. I’m used to being around all the cultural things about it, so none of it is weird to me anymore. When I was a lot younger, it was all strange because it’s out of the ordinary to do all these crazy ceremonies.”

Khan’s lifestyle following his faith is not always similar to the common religion of Christianity, which is over three-fourths of the American population, but it makes the Islam religion exactly what Khan puts his heart into. However, Judaism, more common than Islam, is also less common to Christianity.

“We don’t really focus on [following all the Jewish laws],” Margalit said. “We focus on the ideals of the community. My folks aren’t from America; they’re from Israel. So rather than following the American-Jewish community, which is different than the Israeli-Jewish community, we celebrate religious occasions and we do dinners, but we do everything in Hebrew as opposed to English.”

Celebrating ceremonies is universal in religions but differ between each one, making each practice different from each other.

“At the end of the month of Ramadan, [Eid al-Fitr] is like our Christmas, and we get gifts on that day,” Khan said. “We go to our mosque, and we do prayer on that day. After that, we just meet up with the family and just celebrate.”

Going through the actions of those ceremonies, however, does not make a faith, as Khan believes. Going to the place of worship and simply “going through the motions” is not what makes a faith.

“Observing a religion is accepting its values as valid,” Margalit said, “but putting your faith and belief in a religion means you don’t think about it. You just believe; you take it for granted. It’s perfectly fine to do that, and people who do are probably content, but I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that.”

There is no wrong answer when it comes to faith, according to believers. Believing in something greater has no limits or regulations. In order to take another step in her faith journey, Skowyra attended Kairos last October, a four-day nondenominational church retreat offered at St. Francis de Sales Church to juniors and seniors.

“Kairos really opened my eyes to seeing religion a different way, and it gave me the opportunity to do so by joining Peer Ministry and just having these other teens to experience it with,” Skowyra said. “Now that I started going to St. Francis and just looking at religion differently, I find it more applicable to life as a teen in everyday situations. It’s more open to interpretation. It really stresses that things we go through in life as teenagers, even though to adults, they might not seem as important, we can still use our religion to get through them.”

Kairos has been the turning point in her faith, according to Skowyra. The experience of finding herself in the perspective of her faith is what pushed her to make her faith a priority in her life.

“After Kairos, we were all encouraged to go [to Life Nights, the Sunday night get-togethers of the Youth Group program.] It was a good kind of peer pressure,” Skowyra said. “[Peer Ministry] really showed me that it was something I wanted to pursue, and it’s an environment that is so open and so perfect for still being social and making friends, but doing it in terms of your faith. Just talking to the other people there about your faith is kind of like a glimpse at being back at a church retreat, so you get the same feeling, but more in the context of your life.”

Although church retreats events distanced from reality, the acts taught there are meant to come home with those attendees. Religion can teach the true universal teachings of society.

“Everyone’s a person and to be treated that way is expected and demanded of society. The reason they are called Judeo-Christian values is because they’re both Jewish and Christian values. Many of the values Judaism has also apply to Christianity,” Margalit said. “There will always be people in the world who will not like Jews, and I have encountered them in school and outside of school, and I’m guessing I’m going to continue to do that.”

As Margalit continued, there are people who believe different religions or not in any religion at all. However, it is not necessary to follow a religion to have a faith. Individuals do not need to follow a religion to have a faith, but it also is not necessary to have a faith to be a good person, Margalit said.

“I never really believed in a god persay,” Margalit said, “but that’s not necessarily the most important part of Judaism. There are certainly people that will disagree with me. What’s most important are the values of the community, which I still appreciate and uphold to right now from my childhood. I just fill in the blanks. You don’t have to have it written in the Torah to not kill someone; you already know not to kill people. Filling in the blanks isn’t too hard.”