Moreau Integration Luzmariaelena Flores Moreau Integration 03/02/22 Who am I? Do I live with convections? My name is Luzmariaelena Flores and I am 18 years old. I am a daughter of 2 immigrant parents and I have a little sister. I am a first year freshman in Notre Dame majoring in Neuroscience and Behavior. I identify myself as female and catholic. I live in a low income household and have attended public schools all my life. I have a dream to become a Physician assistant. These are all things that identify me. However, they do not tell me what convections I live with. With the start of this Moreau lesson, I struggled to think what convictions I have that are not a part of the treadmill. I confused my convections with what job I wanted or how I wanted things to go during my school years. During Week 5 of Moreau, we watched a sparknote of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein. I automatically connected convections with a cause and concern. (Mary Shelley, 1818) My cause and Concern was CRISPR. CRISPR is fairly new in the scientific community. CRISPR has been found to be useful in gene-editing. CRISPR's basic function is to cut out a specific piece of DNA which it has been programmed to delete. After this happens, the DNA can naturally repair and continue as if nothing happened. CRISPR can help in lots of medical breakthroughs since they can change a person's DNA in order to help them with genetic diseases. At first, I thought this is my convection. This was something that I was worried about and wanted to change. CRISPR is a topic I want to be more careful with, but this did not tie in on how I wanted my life to go. I then began to focus on how to make a true reflection of my life. Tasha Eurcih explained that reflection is not just thinking of what you did or what you could change, but what happened to lead to that moment. At times, I felt doing a reflection was useless. Every time I reflected I fell into a spiral of my own thoughts that never led me to anything. Eurcih put my thoughts into words. “In other words, we can spend endless amounts of time in self-reflection but emerge with no more self-insight than when we started.” “Self-reflection doesn’t necessarily help people become more self-aware.” (Tasha Eurich, 2017) Researchers found out that when people were asked to self-reflect it didn't cause an individual to find some insight about themselves. The people ended up the same as they were before they self reflected. This result they found was able to lead to a way to better self-reflect in terms of “What” instead of terms in “Why.” As stated previously, I always found it difficult to find something new about myself and this proved that I was doing reflection wrong. I started to reflect on my beliefs and what I truly wanted to get out of my life. All I thought was about internal and external happiness, friendship, love, and faith. I realized that I have not been as active as I wanted to be with my faith. I wanted to more clearly embody my religion in more than just attending mass. I think that I’m on a path where I can gain the most of myself. As time passed by, I also realized that I have not been in tune with my internal happiness. I kept on comparing my academics and my skills to those that were my friends. I felt constant pressure to keep up and do more. Deresiewicz’s quote “true leadership means being able to think for yourself and act on your convictions.” (Deresiewicz, 2010) I had begun to no longer be a leader. Leadership at first meant success. It meant to be able to know everything and get everything correctly. I had grown accustomed to relating to the smartest person in my class as a class leader in high school. Before reading this article, I would have thought that leadership and success were the same. But now, I understand that leadership is being able to be alone and still feel accomplished and happy with oneself. Leadership involves self reflection and multiple point views, not just one. After self reflection, I realized that I was being swayed by the actions of others and could no longer think about what I wanted or what convictions I followed. I had stressed myself with the amount of classes I had in order to follow my friends. After doing a lot of self reflection and spending time with my thoughts, I decided to drop a class. After dropping my class, I felt relieved and happy to have dropped something that had been bothering me mentally. I finally felt that I could breath and slow down to a pace where I felt accomplished and not feel like I am failing behind everyone else. Pope Francis also wants us to act on our conventions and express memory, creativity, and courage. (Pope Francis, 2017) I was able to embody courage in my decisions and act upon them. However, I am still struggling to embody all of them in my process to act upon my convections. Furthermore, I knew that in order to find a way to embody my convections I didn’t have to figure all of it out on my own. I knew that I had mentors that had been with me since highschool and people that I could rely on to trust. In my fourth week of Moreau, I learned about good academic mentors and life mentors. Daloz Parks explained mentors to be the people that can view me as a young adult and help me develop my own indepence without pushing me too far. (Sharon Daloz Parks, 2000) They are the ones I can talk to and trust their opinion. These people are not parents who raised us and love us; they are people that have seen us grow and sees us as another adult to be. I knew that if I spoke to my mentors I would be able to learn how to embody my convections into my decisions I make. Talking to my mentor and advisors helped me understand what I was struggling and what I could do to change. I learned that I forced myself to change to the conventions of others and forget my own. They helped me recognize that the pace I follow should only be mine and that others should follow theirs. Overall, in my second semester of Notre Dame I have been able to learn more about myself. I learned about what convection is and what my convictions are. I now know how I can use self reflection and independence in order to reinforce my convictions. I can also now act upon my convections with memory, creativity, and courage.