Toby Bradshaw Professor Taylor Moreau First-Year Experience 30 November 2021 What Have I Encountered and How Will I Respond? In my time so far at Notre Dame, I have questioned far more things about my life than ever before. One might think that I should have done this before college to help inform my college choice. Although I am starting to feel more comfortable at Notre Dame now, I have asked some important questions about my life, what I have accomplished, my choices, and who I want to be someday. I ask the first question primarily because of self-doubt. Being constantly surrounded by so many overachievers and go-getters, I feel like I am out of my league, not even able to compete with my new peers. Furthermore, even in my social life, I feel like I am also on the outside. I feel like almost everyone has already formed a friend group that they consistently hang out with. It is not like I feel like I have no friends, I have plenty of friends and people who like me. However, I feel like I do not have a consistent group of friends like in high school. This has led to me feeling very out of place, like an impostor among my peers. I always feel like I should be doing more; seeing more people, studying more, and working out more because of the way I see others and the expectations I put on myself. However, as Julia Hogan said, “ I’m going to let you in on a little secret: these expectations are arbitrary.” (“Why Letting Go of Expectations is a Freeing Habit” by Julia Hogan - Moreau First Year Experience Week Nine). Taking some time over break to unwind and think about who I wanted to be was very freeing and helped me come to a better relationship with myself and be happier so far back at Notre Dame. Furthermore, taking the time to do some self-work helped me make friends by realizing that I needed to be myself more, rather than pretending to be someone so I could get into a friend group. And, as Parker J. Palmer said, “ The work of becoming receptive is quite unlike the external work of building communal structures or gathering endlessly to “share” and “solve problems”: receptivity involves inner work. Community begins not externally but in the recesses of the human heart.” (“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Community” by Parker J. Palmer - Moreau First Year Experience Week Eleven). This quote encapsulates how I feel about opening up more to others, rather than how I interpreted it before: that I needed to try harder to go out more and be with others more. Now, I feel like I do not have to hang out with people every second of every day and it is ok to get B’s or even C’s. This realization has also helped me with my career discernment as I try to understand what I want to do with my life. I am still very unsure but I feel more confident to be myself and follow my own path as well as God’s path. Spending more time with my family over break gave me a better appreciation of the gifts I have been given by God. With that, I realized that I need to put more effort into deepening my relationship with God, just as I need to deepen my relationship with my friends at Notre Dame. As Fr. James B. King Said, “Striving for completeness means spending one’s life as a citizen of this world imitating the person of Christ as the gateway to citizenship in heaven. On this bedrock principle, all faith and thus all human hope rests.” ( “Hope - Holy Cross and Cristian Education ” by Fr. James B. King - Moreau First Year Experience Week Twelve). This means that I need to place more faith and hope in God to guide my path for the future. I think that this will be more difficult for me than it should be. In recent years I have become less and less religious and my faith has decreased in importance, which is somewhat ironic because I am attending a prestigious catholic school. It is not really something that I am proud of and I need to start making a better attempt to deepen my faith. I can make some simple steps like attending mass more regularly but the bulk of the work rests on my shoulders. Furthermore, one thing that has become much less black and white for me in the past is racism and other related social issues. In the past, since I was surrounded by so many like-minded individuals who all agreed with me that racism was bad, I feel like I did not experience true racism or even really realize that it existed. Because of this, I did not do as much research into the topic. However, by being at Notre Dame and learning more about institutional racism and critical race theory, I have come to a greater understanding of the world I live in and my own country’s terrible flaws. As Fr. John Jenkins said, “A country whose citizens treat one another with scorn does not have a bright future.” (“Wesley Theological Seminary 2012 Commencement Address” by Fr. John Jenkins - Moreau First Year Experience Week Ten), I believe that I need to do what I can to combat racism where I find it to help others and our nation. I must use what privilege I have to begin to make things better. This may even be the path in which God leads me for my career. I am certainly open to it. Ultimately, my thanksgiving break and the short time leading up to it have had the greatest impact on my college experience so far. The time I took to reflect has given me a much clearer picture of my future and who I am as a person as well as a greater understanding of my world’s problems. I also feel so much less burnt out and empowered to take on the challenges of my future, whatever it may be.