Integration Three Teasley 1 Professor Espeseth Moreau First Year Experience 4 March 2021 Learning to Live Early in his life, William learned that the best way to help others is by finding a hobby or choosing a profession that he genuinely enjoys doing. This motivates you to put your best foot forward in whatever you wind up doing. As the Notre Dame Career Center wrote, “The only way to know more about yourself is to test the waters - just get out and experience life! Everything you’ve done to this point, as well as all the interactions you’ve had with others, have already started shaping your VIPS. ” (“Navigating Your Career Journey - Moreau First Year Experience Course” by Meruelo Family Center for Career Development - Moreau FYE Week Four). William lived out this quote by never being afraid to try new things. By doing so, he was able to find something he was truly passionate about. Using his experiences, he was able to figure out what he does and does not like to do. When you enjoy what you do, your own happiness and satisfaction with your work will incentivize you to work harder for and give more to your community. For example, in his junior year of high school, William worked at Chick-fil-A. William quickly realized that he strongly disliked the monotony of working in a kitchen. He realized he was not incentivized to serve others well. This experience taught him that working in fast food is not the best way that he can serve those around him. It also taught him the importance of enjoying your career to perform better. This allowed William to search for other jobs that he genuinely enjoys, allowing him to serve his community in the most effective way. https://undergradcareers.nd.edu/navigating-your-career-journey---moreau/ https://undergradcareers.nd.edu/navigating-your-career-journey---moreau/ Teasley 2 While putting himself out there and exploring new interests, William learned the value of meditation. As Pico Iyer stated, “Don’t just do something. Sit there.” (“Why we need to slow down our lives” by Pico Iyer - Moreau FYE Week One). Although it seems counterintuitive, sometimes we need to do less to do more. People want to be productive and move fast. This quote points out that sometimes the best thing for us is to just sit there and meditate and take a break from our work and from overloading ourselves. As research has shown, taking a break will ultimately make us more productive. William realized this on his way back to school from winter break his freshman year of college. Before coming back to school, he spent his final hours at home rushing to pack and to see his friends and spend time with his parents and siblings. Typically, when he drives, William loves to listen to his 80s rock on full volume to keep his energy going. On the two hour car ride back to school, however, being by himself for the first time in a while and on his way to begin the second semester of his college career, he decided to drive in silence and reflect on what kind of semester he wanted to have and on what kind of person he wanted to ultimately become. This car ride allowed him to clear his head and create a guide for what to do in the coming semester. William finally got a chance to evaluate what was keeping him from accomplishing his goals and come up with a plan to eliminate his excuses. William also soon realized that too much of the wrong type of meditation can be harmful. Too much self reflection on the things you cannot control can be negative for your mental health. As Tasha Eurich noted in her study of people who do various amounts of self-reflection, “The people who scored high on self-reflection were more stressed, depressed and anxious, less satisfied with their jobs and relationships, more self-absorbed, and they felt less in control of their lives. What’s more, these negative consequences seemed to increase the more they https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/ https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/ Teasley 3 reflected” (“The right way to be introspective (yes, there’s a wrong way)” by Tasha Eurich - Moreau FYE Week Six). It might be easy to assume that those who reflect on who they are more often would be confident with who they are and with where they are going because they have spent more time thinking about it. However, this study suggests that those who reflect on themselves more are more likely to be stressed, depressed, anxious, and less satisfied with their lives. Therefore it seems like we should spend less time reflecting on ourselves and more time doing things that make us happy or that make us feel productive. This study taught William that he should focus more on the things that he can do and the talents he had instead of focusing on the traits he could not possess, like wishing to be taller. William often found himself comparing himself to his taller, stronger, and smarter friends and wished that he could be like them. However, to live a life well-lived, William accepted the things that he could not control and began to focus on the things that he could control by working out and studying more. When meditating in the right way, William wondered how he wanted to be remembered. He came across a quote from Fr. Michael Himes, which read: “The central issue in being a human being, and therefore in being a Christian, is what the New Testament calls Agape – a very particular form of love, a love which is self-gift, a way of giving oneself away to the ‘other.’” ("Three Key Questions" adapted from Fr. Michael Himes - Moreau FYE Week Three). William realized that the definition of the word agape aligns most closely with his definition of a life well lived. William believed that a life well lived should be guided by a desire to help others. He also believed that it is important to genuinely enjoy what you are doing in order to maximize what you are providing the community with because when you enjoy what you do, your own happiness and satisfaction with your work will incentivize you to work harder for and give more https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/ https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40250/files/471135?module_item_id=145929 Teasley 4 to your community. Reflecting on this, William decided that he wanted to be remembered for his passionate assistance to others. Fortunately, William was in the best position to learn how to help others. William attended the University of Notre Dame, which Father Hesburgh once described as “a crossroads where all the intellectual and moral currents of our times meet in dialogue. A place where all of the burning issues that affect the church and the world today are plumped to their depths in an atmosphere of faith, where differences of culture and religion and conviction can coexist with friendship, stability, and even love” (“Hesburgh” produced by Jerry Barca and Christine O'Malley - Moreau FYE Week Two). Notre Dame is a place where students are called to solve problems in an environment where a multitude of perspectives are present and many different cultures are celebrated. Much like Father Hesburgh’s accomplishments, Notre Dame puts many different cultures and backgrounds into conversation and produces solutions. William used the skills he learned while at Notre Dame to become a leader in the aerospace industry to lead not just his country, but all of humanity into the next frontier. He made sure that all were equally represented. When deciding what he wanted to do with his life, a conversation with his mother made him realize that engineering was his passion (Moreau FYE Week Five). She told him a story about when William was in second grade and building Legos. She had bought him a 1,000 piece Imperial Star Destroyer Lego set for Christmas. She told him that he spent the next two days locked in his room putting it together. When he finished and was excited to show her the completed build, his twin brother smashed it back into a thousand pieces. Instead of getting upset, William picked up the pieces and went back to his room to rebuild the ship. William’s https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=10159379-7eca-4549-8581-ab9500c9ecd9 Teasley 5 mother told him that as he grew up, he had always immediately looked for solutions to problems. It is this quality that she thought made William a great engineer. At Notre Dame, William learned that one of the most important traits of a good leader is empathy. As Pope Francis said, “As I meet, or lend an ear to those who are sick, to the migrants who face terrible hardships in search of a brighter future, to prison inmates who carry a hell of pain inside their hearts, and to those, many of them young, who cannot find a job, I often find myself wondering: ‘Why them and not me?’” (“Why the only future worth building includes everyone” by His Holiness Pope Francis - Moreau FYE Week Seven). This quote stood out to William because it offered a new perspective for the way he saw others who are less fortunate than him. William learned to put himself in their shoes and realize that we all have needs, desires, and feelings. This realization made William into an inclusive leader who cared about those he led. https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript