Prof. Thigpen
Moreau First Year Experience
03 December 2021
Oh, The Places I’ve Gone, The Things I’ve Done
	Now that I am finishing up my first semester of freshman year in college, I can say that I have encountered a lot of things. Not all were comfortable experiences, but they were all beneficial in some manner. The number one take away from all the experiences, whether good or bad, was to learn from them, and that will continue to be my philosophy.
	The very first encounter of my college career began before I even stepped foot on campus. I was accepted to Notre Dame which was a surreal moment for me as a high schooler who had no clue what they wanted to do in life beyond my hometown. I was a straight-A student who had never failed at a large scale, and I could feel that some failures were coming my way in college as I tried to navigate my way through the first year: “We all make mistakes. We will disappoint people. We’ll disappoint ourselves. But the world doesn’t have to end when that happens” (“Why Letting Go of Expectations is a Freeing Habit” by Julia Hogan – Moreau FYE Week Nine). I have struggled a lot in life, most frequently with imposter syndrome. I would always work hard in school and sports and work hard in every aspect of my life because it gave me a challenge and I wanted to see to the end of it and be successful. I am very internally motivated which is a double-edged sword because it became too harsh when I didn’t reach a goal I had set for myself, and often I became too hyper focused on the task at hand. I was reaching a lot of my goals and was very successful in school and sports. However, looking around at other people I had doubts about if I really was good enough. First issue, what is “good enough?” To me, “good enough” was perfection and what would actually be considered “good enough” was failure. I had it skewed from the beginning. And then to watch others excel with what looked like very little effort, I became confused. I thought that I shouldn’t have to work this hard to be at the same level, when in reality they were putting in the same amount of work, if not more. Getting accepted into Notre Dame felt validating after years of hard work, however there was still a nagging feeling of doubt. Needless to say, now that I am here, I can somewhat trust that I was accepted intentionally, not by accident because it is starting to feel like home.
	With some of my encounters, I have been tempted to respond with judgment and hatred. However, that is only going to make the situation worse, and I will probably never learn from it in a way that will benefit me: “Hatred is not out there. It is in here—ready to rise in disguise inside of us, posing as virtue, sowing destruction” (“Wesley Theological Seminary 2012 Commencement Address” by Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C. – Moreau FYE Week Ten). I had a high school English teacher who was very open about what he believed. Coming from a more conservative suburb, it was a wake-up call for a lot of us on the topics he wasn’t afraid of bringing up in class. I for one did not agree with him, but I could never tell what other people were thinking because knowing when he would shut people down versus accept their viewpoint was a tricky line to toe. If someone offered a view different from his, it was shut down completely and people learned quickly not to speak up. His so-called “open-mindedness” and “tolerance” was quite the opposite. I sat in that class listening to his points, yet when it was my turn to speak, he couldn’t even fathom listening. I was not without fault, however, because I could feel my hatred inside me nearly boiling over each day in class. I hated the fact that his hatred was in guise of being tolerate. Now that I look back on it, his “hatred” for the other side was from the fact he thought he was the one with virtue, and he would never be able to let that go until the other side believed what he believed in. I also realized that I could not let go of my own hatred for the seemingly obvious hypocrisy until my teacher realized it himself. This wasn’t going to work because he had his own hatred, so I had to move forward, and I decided to learn from him how I didn’t want to be in the future. This was a learning opportunity and an encounter that was new to me and eye-opening.
	A lot of my experiences here at Notre Dame will be centered around forming community. I need to respond in a way that will cultivate an environment for community to flourish, not in a way that inhibits its growth: “When we act on the scarcity assumption it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy through a process called resentment, and people are rendered incapable of community” (“Thirteen Ways of Looking at Community” by Parker J. Palmer – Moreau FYE Week Eleven). I am definitely guilty of holding grudges and holding court when I see an injustice. I can’t help but try and find order in the world and see through that everything is fair. Usually, it comes in the form of keeping track of how much I help around the house compared to my sisters. I become so hyper focused on what they are not doing, I don’t truly appreciate it when they are helping around the house when I can’t. It is impossible to keep everything in a neat and tidy score column for everything, and if I want to build stronger bonds with people during the times I look at what they aren’t doing, I will need to look at the relationship from a different approach. Reciprocity is the key, and it is different than keeping score. It is about helping out while I can and, in the future, someone will help me out when I am unable. I need to see the good that they bring to the table and call upon their resourcefulness.
	Besides learning from my experiences, it will also be important for me to recognize that I am not alone in my experiences. I can turn to other people for help, or even better I can turn to God during challenging experiences: “There is no failure the Lord’s love cannot reverse, no humiliation He cannot exchange for blessing, no anger He cannot dissolve, no routine He cannot transfigure. All is swallowed up in victory. He has nothing but gifts to offer. It remains only for us to find how even the cross can be borne as a gift” (“Holy Cross and Christian Education” by Blessed Basil Moreau – Moreau FYE Week Twelve). I think that it is easy to catastrophize a lot of the hardships we face in life and isolate ourselves from others when we do go through challenging times. We think that this challenge that I failed is the end-all-be-all or that I am the only one that struggles with this common challenge. We are not alone in the human sense because everyone has their ups and downs in life, however, we are also not alone spiritually. God is right there all along, and if we need reminding, we can always look at the cross. It gives us hope that He will always be there, and that he went through a much more gruesome suffering so that we could be saved. There is nothing that He cannot make a blessing, and I think it is easy to lose sight of just how common our sufferings can be. Broadening my perspective on how these experiences affected me will help me respond more effectively to any of my encounters in life.