August 2019
On the joys that
lie ahead
Harry Scherer
Class of 2022
As my classmates and I transition
into our second year of college, there seems to be a
common sentiment of expectation for the unknown, but
comfort in the knowledge and experience of the past. This
upcoming year will be markedly different for me in some
ways but pleasantly similar in other ways.
Firstly, I will be a resident
assistant on the same floor on which I was a resident
during freshman year. For the sake of myself and, most
importantly, the residents for whom I will be responsible,
this added obligation and privilege will consume physical
and mental energy. I have little idea what to expect for
this position, but I anticipate the joys, sorrows,
successes and difficulties which accompany it.
By virtue of the position, I will
be required to think of persons, many persons, other than
myself. This requirement is, of course, incumbent upon all
of us because of our humanity, but is particularly
necessary for me with these men. The situation makes me
think of my aunt, a nurses’ aide, remarking about a
colleague: "she’s a solid aide. And that’s about the best
thing you can say about the people who do that job." My
hope is that the residents think of me at the end of the
academic year as a "solid RA", despite my vices and
weaknesses.
The year will also be the same in
many ways, as well. I will still be going to classes,
eating lunch with friends and trying to live the way a
college student should. While seemingly innocuous, all of
these tasks require interior and exterior motivation, as
is the case with any other human action which has any
meaning to it. Otherwise, we would not get out of bed in
the morning. We have to face the dragon of the unknown
every day, without any guarantee that this encounter will
be successful. Thankfully, the dragon of resistance from
ourselves, others and nature make us stronger and more
capable of winning the battle for the next day. Outside of
this outlook, the banality of life seems to overcome too
many in our own generation in the forms of drug and
alcohol abuse, suicide ideation or even a consistent
apathy.
These perversions of life itself
remind me of my junior philosophy teacher in high school
often repeating the meaningful phrase: "Bad metaphysics
leads to bad ethics!" Without a proper understanding of
who we are, who God is and what our relationship with Him
is, we will not treat each other or ourselves with the
respect and dignity which we deserve by nature of our
humanity.
One of the best things about
college, especially in an isolated, rural environment, is
the ability and encouragement to talk about things like
this. I did not realize at the beginning of my freshman
year that I should carve out time to talk about these
topics with very knowledgeable people. As an incoming
freshman, I was so concerned with initiating social
relationships and filling up all the hours of the day with
activity that I did not give myself the chance to step
back and consider the bigger picture about who a college
student should really be and why I am at this college with
these people at this particular time. Now that I have had
some time during the summer to step back from many of
these social obligations and activities, I was reminded of
the necessity for time in solitude and silence. In
addition, I hope to take greater advantage of the office
hours of professors. Every professor that I have had so
far has been particularly generous and encouraging with
their office hours and it is a resource which I think I
neglected in my first year. Also, I would like to spend
more time at the grotto. That place of peace is, in my
eyes, one of the best attributes of our campus.
After all of these practical
resolutions, I still know almost nothing about what will
be different about this upcoming school year. Recently,
whenever I tell myself that I have ‘almost no idea what to
expect’ about a certain experience or encounter, the
result is almost always positive. Granted, these reminders
are usually said in moments of anticipation and not those
of hesitation, but my sentiments for the upcoming year are
certainly ones of anticipation. But, what has become more
frequent in my routine of mental preparation for these
sorts of things is the expectation of suffering and a
vague idea of how to deal with it. This seems to be
understood even on a natural and secular level. For
example, clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson said, "it
is not an accident that the axiomatic Western individual
is someone who was unfairly nailed to a cross and
tortured." While the limitation of Christ to that of
axiomatic individual of the West might be myopic in
theological scope, the idea of the universality of
suffering is still very present for secular society. We
should be encouraged to recognize that suffering is an
unavoidable part of life and is worth considering even
while we are not experiencing it. This might seem
unnaturally cynical for a college student, let alone a
sophomore college student, let along a sophomore college
student writing about the joys and hopes of the future. I
beg the forgiveness of the reader, but I want to think
like this at this point of my life so that I might be a
blind optimist at the end of my life.
To that end, a final hope for this
upcoming year is a greater devotion to the ancient prayer
of memento mori, remember your death. Our generation would
do well to have a greater eschatological urgency with
regard to how we direct our thoughts, words and deeds.
Memento mori is not a morbid foreboding of our ultimate
demise, but rather a hopeful anticipation of the joys that
lie ahead.
Read other articles by Harry Scherer
Embracing change
Angela Guiao
MSMU Class of 2021
A new year, a new experience, a
new change. As I enter my junior year, I can’t help but
look back at my transformation over my time here at the
Mount. And, I must say, it is rather grand.
I remember starting out when I was
a shy, scared Freshman. I still remember wandering the
halls of the AC, trying to find my class despite already
being ten minutes late, just because I was too scared to
ask someone how to get there. I remember hiding away in my
room on family weekend or bonfires because I felt like I
was too introverted compared to the other people in my
grade.
By the time I began sophomore
year, I found I had emerged from my shell. I discovered my
love for volunteering, and I made close and supportive
friends. I realized how meaningful and fun it is to attend
events and feel like a part of something. I finally felt
like I was in college. I had gained this sense of freedom
and independence that I couldn’t achieve when I lived at
home or when I was a freshman.
I started to feel like I could
actually make a difference. I understood how my hard work
and perseverance could help make a change in the world.
And I think that is the importance of college. I think we
need to feel this way so that our world can become a
better, more inclusive, more loving place.
This semester, as I continue my
education and enter my third year here at the Mount, I
realized something else. Looking back, I can see how much
I have grown. Some of the best moments of my life have
already happened here at the Mount, but this year, I
understand that I am part of something bigger. I have
control of my own life. My own choices that I make are
what defines my future.
I am now officially closer to
graduating than I am to the start of my college life. And
if I am being completely honest, I’m scared. I now have to
start thinking about the future. I am starting to wonder
about what is going to happen to me when I graduation.
What will come next? Will it all be worth it?
I find myself plagued with the
questions I believe are on the minds of all my other
fellow juniors: Will I be able to get a job? Will I be
able to make enough money to pay off my loans? What is
going to happen to me when the day comes where I leave the
Mount?
Will it all be worth it?
As everything changes this new
school year, I am going to keep one thing in my mind: I
can do anything I set my mind to. I think a lot of us may
need to be reminded that. We are told this as children,
but we tend to forget this as we grow older. I think all
people crave the same basic necessities. We crave comfort,
we crave companionship, and we crave an end goal. We like
to feel like we are doing things for a reason, like we
have a purpose. And that is what I am going to focus on
this year.
I may be getting older, and I may
be closer to the day where I’ll have to fend for myself in
the real world. But I know that all I have to do is
remember why I did this. What is my end goal?
I want to graduate. I want to make
my mother proud. I want to make a difference. I want to
work at a job I love. I want to make a goal and achieve
it. I want to be comfortable enough so that I can focus on
things that matter. Overall, alike everyone else, I want
to live a life that makes me happy.
This year, I realized that I am in
charge of my own life. I am in control, and it is my
decisions that will determine my success or failure. I
realized how much I have changed. How I have transformed
from the small, dependent, scared freshman to this strong,
determined, motivated junior.
I learned that I need to work on
embracing change. I need to learn to take things and just
go with it. I can worry and stress and wonder all day
every day but doing so is just not a productive use of my
time.
This year as I grow up, as I
continue to mature, and as I learn how to prioritize the
things which are most important, I understood the
importance of learning from your past and working towards
becoming a better version of yourself.
We can do anything we want to do.
Isn’t that what college is about? We can be whatever we
want to be. I feel like we forget about this. This is the
foundation of university life. The ideal may disappear in
the bustle of school work and tests. It may get lost in
the late nights with friends and lunches alone in the
library.
But we went to college because we
believed that we could make a change. We believed that we
could make a difference. We believed we could challenge
ourselves. We believed that we could make ourselves a
better future. We understood the importance of hoping and
believing that we actually play a part in our life. And
this year, I want to go back to believing. I want to feel
the same sense of excitement and possibilities that I felt
when I was freshman. And I want to do so with the complete
understanding that anything is still possible.
We may grow older, and we may find
ourselves face-to-face with the realities of life, but we
should never forget the feeling of hope and blind
enthusiasm for life and our possibilities. Let us embrace
change together. Let us grow, learn, and continue to
believe.
Read other articles by Angela (Tongohan) Guiano
Forever changing
Morgan Rooney
MSMU Class of 2020
Something that many people fear,
but I choose to embrace (I try to at the very least) is
change. Every day, there are little changes that make the
following day different and the day before seeming more of
a distant pass. Change is the reason that we can’t look at
tomorrow like we think about yesterday. Change creates
uncertainty, and uncertainty often makes fear, but change
isn’t something we should be fearful of. Of course, we
will always make mistakes throughout our lives without
exception, but we will move forward in so many ways as
well. This is how we came to be in this wonderful (but
forever changing) world we’re living in today.
I always try to remind myself that
change is not a bad thing. I think, if I always stuck to
the same old routines and never did anything different,
I’d never live the life I want to live. I’d never achieve
those lifelong dreams that I’ve had since I was a child. I
would never travel to certain places or make any
achievements. I would never grow to become the person that
I want to become. I need to do things outside of my
comfort zone if I want to grow as a person, and that means
making changes and embracing changes.
I’m looking forward to this school
year more than any other, not just because it’s my last
year before graduation, but because I’m ready to work hard
again and start thinking about what’s next. As much as I
always say how excited I am to finally finish up school
and graduate with my degrees, it will certainly be a
difficult change. This is the first time I will ever
finish a school year and not have to prepare for more
years to come, which is a scary thing to think about
because it is not the norm. I anticipate many years of
learning to come, but they will never be in quite same
way.
As much as we’re afraid of change,
it always seems to be what we’re waiting for it our whole
lives. We’re always waiting for that next paycheck, or
that trip overseas, or until we finally get the job we’ve
always wanted. We’re always waiting for that amazing point
in our life when we are finally happy and have everything
and sometimes, we forget to enjoy where we are. I’ve
learned that it’s important to look forward to the future
to build yourself up and motivate yourself, but you need
to live in the moment as well. It is not the best approach
to life to always live in the future.
Something that I definitely need
to work on is to embrace change, but not live for it. Some
things may change so slowly that I never see anything in a
different light, but others will change so fast that I
will need to appreciate how things are before it’s gone.
One of the many changes that I
have already made this year was moving up to the Managing
Editor position at this paper. It has been an exciting and
worthwhile challenge that I am looking forward to
continuing throughout the school year. The Emmitsburg
News-Journal is certainly and experience that I will never
forget and something I am extremely proud of.
It will be interesting to meet so
many new people once again and move into a different
location. I am looking forward to moving back in and
continuing what I started while almost making so many new
memories along the way. I will be in new classes
(including the ones I was dreading and have been putting
off until the last year) and I will be living with new
people, alike most other students. It’s not as big of a
leap as the first-year students who are leaving high
school and joining us to get their higher education, but
it is still an exciting step towards the next chapter of
my life.
This is my last year returning to
the Mount which is pretty scary to think about because I
don’t have a clue what is going to come next. This is
going to be something I will need to carefully figure out
along with each course’s workload, but I’m full of
excitement for the day I walk across that stage and
receive my degree. Receiving my degree will be one of the
proudest moments I will ever have, certainly one of the
proudest moments I’ve had so far with few things that I
could even put in the same category.
Throughout college, my friends
have already changed so much. As sad as it is to watch a
friend slowly fade out of your circle and out of your
life, plenty more will come into the picture. College is a
time where you figure out who your lifelong friends will
be and which friendships are more short lived and only are
in your life for the time being. There is nothing wrong
with that. We all need to go into our own directions and
everyone may not be along for the ride. Even though these
changes happen, this does not mean that they were not
valuable friendships that we enjoyed and learned from.
There are not enough stars in the
sky to count how many changes will take place during the
course of my life. There have been moves across long
distances and many travels. There have been times where
everything seemed to be going my way and days where
nothing seemed to work out. There have been many births
but may deaths along the way. There has been so much
laughter but many days of sorrow. This is the
rollercoaster of life. The best advice I have for myself
is something that all of us have heard before: "Hope for
the best but expect the worst." I can’t control everything
but all the changes that are to come are happening for a
reason. It’s so I can learn from them and grow into the
person I want to be.
Read other articles by Morgan Rooney
Change: a new
way to look younger
Shea Rowell
MSMU
Class of 2019
At the end of his life, a family
friend made a comment I will never forget. "You only get
old," he said, "when your world starts getting smaller." I
think about this often, as it is both a warning and a
challenge to those who wish to stay young (at heart). Our
friend, an active farmer through his late eighties, was
advising us to continue actively expanding ourselves, or,
in other words, to remain open to change.
The old cliché, "you can’t teach
an old dog new tricks," rings true in many cases I’ve
seen, but my peers and I, in our early twenties, have no
such excuse. Change supposedly comes naturally to the
young as a part of normal human development. The young not
only adapt to change, we actively seek it out. I, however,
have never been fond of the idea that the college years
are years of "experimentation," or, even worse, of
"finding yourself" by changing who you have always been.
These philosophies, I fear, lead a person closer to
identity crisis than to self-discovery and peace.
There must be a healthy balance
between stubbornly resisting change and flippantly forcing
it for its own sake. There must be a way to remain young
without, to reference yet another cliché, becoming
reckless.
At the end of my senior year at
Mount St. Mary’s, I applied to a graduate assistantship at
Villanova University’s Office of Graduate Studies. During
the interview, one of the interviewers asked, "how do you
handle times of change?" While I admit this question was
unexpected, I’m glad she asked it, as it gave me the
opportunity to reflect on my own track record with change.
In response, I recounted my "plan" for my senior year of
college, which was to simply remain open to opportunities
as they arose. I was wary of over-planning and
over-preparing, ultimately forcing myself into a shoe that
didn’t fit – a life that was never meant to be mine.
Instead, I decided to (sheepishly) answer "I don’t know
yet," when people asked me what my plans were following
graduation. I decided to apply to every job with an
opening, to take the GRE over my Christmas vacation, and
to resist the urge to count myself out. I decided to trust
God to guide me to the right path. He did.
August 2019 will be a month of
great change in my short life. I will travel out of the
country for the first time on a week-long trip to Paris. I
will attend my first graduate-level English class with new
professors, a new university with new classrooms in new
buildings and in a new state. I will work my first day at
a new job, and for the first time change my official
address from my childhood home. The new and unknown are
equally daunting and exhilarating. Attempting new things
leads to learning new things about myself. I risk learning
more about the weaknesses I never knew I had, or failing
at a task I have never tried. I also risk realizing that
there is room within me to expand, adapt, and maybe even
succeed.
I remember my first night on
campus at Mount St. Mary’s four years ago. As the oldest
of four siblings, I was the first to leave home, and I was
homesick and afraid. I couldn’t help thinking about the
things I knew I would miss: sitting at the dinner table
hearing about my sisters’ days at school; weekend dinners
cooked masterfully by my dad; the friendly faces of my
high school friends and neighbors. I remember staring at
the ceiling while lying in the dark on my Sheridan Hall
top-bunk dorm bed, choking back tears, wondering who I was
without the people I loved surrounding me each day.
Hard as that first night was, the
next day I saw the bright sunshine reflecting from the
statue of Mary at the Grotto for the first time, heard the
musical toll of bells that marks the hours on campus, and
met the strangers who would soon become my best friends.
In short, I made the Mount my home. There, I found more
people to love, and I soon allowed Mount St. Mary’s to
leave her mark on my mind, heart, and soul. Soon enough, I
found myself missing Mount St. Mary’s while I was home on
school breaks, and longing for classes to start again.
As a new school year approaches, I
find myself repeating that same cycle of fear, sadness,
and excitement that I went through four years ago. Doubts
and apprehensions fill my head: will living so far away
from my family cause me to lose touch with them? Will
graduate courses be impossible to keep up with? Will it be
too difficult to balance academics, work, spiritual life,
hobbies, and relationships? Will all the changes be too
overwhelming? What if I’m not smart enough, not good
enough to make it?
When my mind grows clouded with
these doubts and anxieties, there is a prayer I often turn
to called the Litany of Trust. One part of the prayer
reads, "That not knowing what the future holds is an
opportunity to lean on you, Jesus I trust in You." Simple
as it may seem, this prayer is powerful. It reminds me, in
a moment of frantic introspection, that my life is not
entirely about me. God is at the helm, guiding every step,
watching as I make mistakes, waiting for me to call for
His grace.
With God’s help and the support of
those whom I love, I welcome the changes that August will
bring. I welcome the first-day-jitters and bashful
introductions. I embrace the inevitable missteps, and the
growth that will follow. I cherish the risk and the
vulnerability of the newness to come, the joys and the
challenges I cannot yet foresee.
This August, my little world will
get a little bit bigger. Wish me luck!
Read other articles by Shea Rowell
Read Past Editions of Four Years at the Mount
