Week 13 - Integration Encountering My True Self in Indiana As my first semester concludes at Notre Dame, it is time to reflect on all of the experiences that I have encountered and made here. At an individual level, being inserted into a challenging environment such as this has forced me to escape from my comfort zone that was always present in Brazil, where I knew and was friends with everyone at my school, as my graduating class had only 35 people. Furthermore, this experience has also led me to respond to my own external and internal dissonance. In the first few months of college, I had great difficulty in making friends, and truly finding a community that I felt I belonged to inside the university. Moreover, making things worse, I felt as if I was alone in this experience, as everywhere I went, people would always be surrounded by friends. However, after reading the articles from Week 9 of Moreau, I reflected on whether my experiences were truly that much different from what others were experiencing. This reflection was mainly caused by Julia Hogan’s words: “Those expectations are the bars we set for ourselves. When we meet (or surpass) them, we feel like we are worthy. If we don’t meet those expectations, we feel like the exact opposite — that we aren’t good enough.” (Why Letting Go of Expectations is a Freeing Habit by Julia Hogan - Moreau FYE Week Nine). This quote particularly resonated with me, as I often set very high expectations for myself and whenever I don’t meet those expectations, I am very down on myself for, and even if I meet the expectations, I don’t feel any sort of validation from it, and feel as if I have just achieved a ‘commonplace’ task that shouldn’t get any praise or reward, as almost anyone could’ve done it. However, after reading the article, it made me realize that I wasn’t actually alone in this experience, and that many others here at Notre Dame were probably also experiencing the same thing, as me. Further, I learned that all of my experiences also deserve some form of validation, no matter how ‘unworthy’ I feel. After several weeks at Notre Dame, I was finally able to find an authentic community where I felt that I truly belonged and that I could be my genuine self. I found this community within the Brazilian community where, although we are from different classes and come from completely different backgrounds, we can bond over many of the things that we miss from home and partake in activities that take our mind off of the stress that we endure here. Henceforth, after reading the articles from week 10, an aspect that particularly struck my attention was how can community make a positive impact in your life, and force me to have a positive change. This was discussed in Kirsten Hegelson’s video: “Yeah, I’ve had vast ranges of people that are coming to the table to all look and approach kintsugi from their different kinds of windows and vantage points in life. Everybody, I hope, walks away with this greater connection to who they are. That they learn that the things that they’ve experienced — the good, the bad, the ugly, all of that — it has made them this beautiful, dynamic, interesting person that they are today. And that that person is worth celebrating and honoring” (Women Find Healing Through Kintsugi Workshop by Grotto Network - Moreau FYE Week Ten). This quote stuck out to me because I truly feel that the Brazilian community which I’m part of here at Notre Dame, has shaped me to become the person that I am and, overall, a better and more realized person, where I feel that I’m on the right path to success. https://grottonetwork.com/navigate-life/health-and-wellness/letting-go-of-expectations/?utm_source=fall_2021&utm_medium=class&utm_id=moreau https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGJLJEqD8gg&ab_channel=GrottoNetwork However, just because my presence in the Brazilian community was having an overall positive impact on myself, it didn’t necessarily mean that I was having a positive impact on others and truly creating relationships with others. In a sense, I felt as if I was using the people in the Brazilian community just for parties and hanging out, while I didn’t contribute much to them other than simply being there and having a mild presence. This experience was further exacerbated after two members of my friend group in the Brazilian community had a falling out with several others, which caused a big divide amongst us in the group. However, after reading the articles in Moreau Week 11, I discovered that strife amongst friends wasn’t actually the ‘worst thing in the world’ and it could end up actually helping all of us: “ Hard experiences—such as meeting the enemy within, or dealing with the conflict and betrayal that are an inevitable part of living closely with others—are not the death knell of community: they are the gateway into the real thing” (14 Ways of Looking at Community by Parker Palmer - Moreau FYE Week Eleven). I found this quote particularly relevant to the situation that I was living as it’s a good reminder that it’s important to not idolize our community as being absolutely perfect all the time, and instead we should remind ourselves that fights and disagreements are extremely common amongst people who spend most of their time together and live so close, especially at Notre Dame where most of the activities are concentrated inside the school’s relatively small campus. This encounter with this train of thought in week eleven of Moreau was particularly important to me, and it’s something that I believe that I’ll take for the rest of my life, leading me to become a more forgiving and compassionate person, and I expect to continue to develop those two traits in the future. In this path that I have undertaken here at Notre Dame to become an overall better person, I have learnt a lot about myself, however, there is one aspect about my life that I have neglected heavily - my spirituality. Although I didn’t specifically grow up catholic, I have had various encounters with Catholic thoughts through my grandmother, and my main concern with religion and spirituality has always been as to how it compares to scientific thought and the ‘rational world’. However, after reading the texts in Moreau Week 12, I realized that this is not actually the way that key catholic philosophers think and that religion and ‘rational science’ can indeed co-exist: “Both Moreau and Newman fully believed that grace and nature are complementary sources of God’s revelation and integral to human understanding. However, as the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions advanced, they recognized that the tension between the dogmas and interests of the Church and society were increasingly straining the traditional understanding that ultimate truth emanates from the Creator.” (Holy Cross and Christian Education by Campus Ministry at University of Notre Dame - Moreau FYE Week Twelve). This quote particularly resonated with me as it significantly changed the way that I treated my spiritual side, and I currently believe that, aside from harnessing your mental and physical aspects, you must also improve your spiritual self in order to truly have a good and well-rounded life. https://www.dumbofeather.com/articles/14-ways-of-looking-at-community/ https://campusministry.nd.edu/assets/105621/ https://campusministry.nd.edu/assets/105621/