Don’t Let Anyone Stifle Your Original Thoughts and Ideas

I have struggled with this concept in Seminary as well. You are supposed to give your summations and your thoughts, but the balance is to cite the influences they came from. Seeing your struggle to finish the huge thesis, you know that some of that massive writing process was explaining where you were coming from. I think that being able to deconstruct where our ideas come from is the ideal skill that such institutions are trying to implement.
Sorry, though, if someone tried to cut you down. You’d think at that level of study that the goal would be to uplift and encourage thought rather than to conform it to regurgitating past writings.