Some Things I'm Going to Miss at ODU

As we all know, I love ODU a lot, so there are more than a few things I'm going to miss now that I've graduated.  This, I'm sure, will not be the only blog post I spend discussing things I miss.  Every day, I come up with more and more things I miss at ODU, so those of you who are fortunate enough to still be students at ODU, enjoy every moment and don't take any of this wonderful school for granted.

This list is in no particular order as I cannot begin to try and compare the many beautiful aspects of Ohio Dominican University I will miss, but I will begin with the part of ODU I know for sure I will miss the most, the very heart of ODU- Christ the King Chapel.  I have been so distraught since graduation.  I've been crying myself to sleep and trying to figure out what to do with my life.  My favorite place to go to cry, think, pray, sit, write, and make decisions over the past four years has been the Chapel.  Now that I have left and am entering this new chapter of my life, I find myself needing to be there in that chapel more than ever.  The last thing I did before I got into the car to leave ODU was say goodbye the chapel.  There were tears.  I didn't want to leave.  Now, I have nowhere to go in the middle of the night when I need to feel very close to Jesus, when I need to feel comforted by the smell of incense and holy water, when I need to cry by myself, when I need a place to focus my thoughts and prayers, when I need silence to listen to God so that I can handle big life changes and making decisions.  I feel so lost now especially in my prayer life.  I regret not going to that chapel every free moment I had.  I didn't realize until just before graduation what a luxury it is to have a 24/7 chapel right downstairs from my bedroom.  I knew I'd miss it a lot, but I didn't know how much until the week before graduation.  So to those of you who are still there with the chapel, I advise you to go there as often as possible.  Soak it in.  Go to Mass as often as you can.  Take time to just sit in there and listen.  Cry and let Jesus hold you there.  Read in there.  Reflect in there.  Love in there as much as possible and enjoy it while you can.

Of course, I'm also going to miss all my friends at ODU: those who are still there and those who have graduated with and before me.  I have met some of the best people I ever known there.  Because of these friends, I have grown in faith, love, knowledge, understanding, and so many other areas of my life.  My friends at Ohio Dominican make me laugh, cry, smile, think, and love life so much!  It's going to be so hard not being able to walk down the hall or across the parking lot to go visit my best friends any time of day when I need a hug, homework help, food, or just someone to talk to.  My ODU friends are seriously the best.  I know I will keep in touch with most of them, but it's certainly not going to be the same.  Living in the residence halls at ODU is like living in a giant house with all of your best friends.  We would go eat meals together on a more regular basis than I do with my actual family.  We would have homework parties to try to keep each other focused (though we usually just distracted each other further).  We would invite each other to go out to places like the grocery store or the mall so we wouldn't have to shop alone.  We would borrow each other's dish soap and laundry detergent when one of us ran out.  We would sit together at Mass.  We would support each other by attending one another's programs and events on campus.  We would go on runs together and motivate each other in the fitness center.  I am losing a huge support system leaving ODU.  I am not only leaving friends, but people I think of as family, because ODU was home for the last 4 and a half years.  Moving away from your family and your home is always tough.

Commencement: A Beginning, Not an End

Yesterday, I walked across a stage and graduated from Ohio Dominican University.  It is a day that I know was inevitable, but still, hoped would never come.  But, alas! It came without my consent.  And I confronted this milestone in my life with the attitude of a stubborn child who just doesn't wanna do it. 

I have cried more in the past week than I think I have in an entire year.  It's strange that my college career began and ended with such intense sad emotions.  When I first came to ODU, I made myself physically sick from sadness.  I did not want to leave home.  I especially did not want to leave my little sister who had nightmares about me going to college and forgetting about her or never coming back.  I cried almost every day my first week.  My whole first year was hard though, because I was so terribly homesick.  I was so happy by Sophomore year though.  After summer, I was eager to return to ODU.  I had found a happy balance and enjoyed being at home, but also, looked forward to going back to school after breaks.  By Senior year though, I found myself happy that I was an RA and was able to return from breaks early and stay in the dorms over breaks if I wanted to.  I was absolutely thrilled when I was able to be a summer RA.  I thought that it would make graduation more bearable if I had all this extra time at ODU.  In some ways, it probably did.  Honestly though, I think I just got even more deeply attached to the school.

I am sitting at home now and I feel so incomplete, like I left something very important behind.  It took all of my strength not to just cry continuously all day.  There were so many moments where I caught myself tearing up and had to suppress it, because I knew that once I started to let myself cry, I'd be sobbing all day and there would be no consoling me.

This graduation has been, by far, one of the hardest experiences I have ever had to go through.  I have known for more than 4 years that this day was coming, but I still was not prepared for it all.  I knew I would be sad, but I had no idea how sad.  It just kept hitting me more and more until I woke up this morning and it all sunk it.  This might be the last time I wake up in an ODU residence hall.  This might be the last time I shower in an ODU shower.  It felt so unreal.  I wanted to deny it was happening.  I went through my whole day just trying not to think about it, living in denial, but every time someone congratulated me or hugged or asked me how I was doing, all I could say was "I am so sad".  Nearly everyone's response to that was a very empathetic "I know".

I love Ohio Dominican so very much.  No one was very surprised that I spent my whole day trying not to cry.  And no one was offended when I didn't want to hangout, because I needed to be alone to cry and being around people would only remind me further of what I'd be missing out on when I graduated.  It is no surprise to anyone that I am more heartbroken about leaving ODU than I have ever been in my entire life.  Ohio Dominican University has somehow become the place I think of when I hear the word "home".  It is where I lived, worked, studied, prayed, loved, played, cried, laughed, sang, danced, ate, slept, and enjoyed for the past 4 and a half years.  My life for the past few years kind of revolved around ODU.  Living on campus, I had everything I ever needed: God, friends, food, a place to lay my head, love.  There is nowhere else that gave me the sense of belonging that Ohio Dominican provided me with.  There is nowhere I felt more at home than I do at ODU.  But now, I have to leave home and go out into the real world where life isn't as easy and fun and love is not always going to be so readily available to me.

On one hand, I hate that I feel this way.  Of course, I don't want to be sad.  On the other hand, I love how much I love ODU.  I love how emotionally attached I am to this place.  Ohio Dominican has given my life so much meaning and purpose.  I have grown in so many incredible ways since I started school there.  And I would not trade that experience for the world.

So I need to accept this end as a beginning.  As Bishop Campbell and Mr. Kurtin told us today, commencement, though treated like an end, is actually a beginning.  I will admit that I do not like beginnings very much.  I've never handled big life changes very well.  But I was sick and sad when I began my time at ODU and, now, I am sick and sad that I have to leave.  I need to see this new beginning as a good thing.  Even though it's beginning with  a sadness, the next four years of my life could very well turn out to be even better than my years at ODU were.  While I doubt this now, I certainly can't deny the possibility.  After all, I did not expect my last few years to be nearly as amazing as they were and, yet, God worked so well in these four years through the school making me fall in love with Him and ODU more than I ever imagined possible.

Thanksgiving in Hamilton Hall

Every year, about a week before Thanksgiving break, Ohio Dominican University hosts a Thanksgiving dinner for students, faculty, and staff in Hamilton Hall.  The staff dims the lights and puts table cloths and centerpieces on all of the tables.  They serve turkey and pumpkin pie and other holiday-themed foods.  This year, I was very impressed by the salad that was served.  It was so good I ended up eating four servings of it!  This salad was made with spinach leaves, strawberries, mandarin oranges, candied pecans, and a poppy-seed dressing.  Honestly, it was quite possibly the most delicious meal I've ever eaten in my life.  I plan to attempt to re-create it for my own family's Thanksgiving this week.  I let one of the workers know how much I enjoyed the salad and he was very pleased.  The Sodexo staff has been trying to get student feedback to help them improve our dining experiences and I have to say that they have been doing a very good job.  I am very impressed and I have heard many other students saying they have been pleased with the improvements they have seen especially in the meals offered in Hamilton.  Hopefully, we will be seeing even more positive changes in the dining hall.  Maybe I'll get lucky and get to consume another delicious salad in Hamilton Hall before I graduate in December!  :-)

Love and Forgivness

"Spread love where you can.  And where you can't spread love, practice the art of forgiveness"

This is how one of my philosophy professors, Kevin Michael, ends every class session.  I am in my second class with him now and I think I am enjoying this one more so than my first class with him.  My Junior year here at ODU I took Philosophy of Good and Evil with him which was also a good class,but this year, I'm in Applied Ethics and it's just a lot better for me in helping me form my own ideas of morality.  I think it has been forcing me to really think more logically about certain issues that I have kind of made an opinion of without necessarily having all the necessary information and viewpoints.  I see a lot of things very differently now that I've opened myself up more to the possibility that I can be wrong.  I'm not saying that all of my opinions have necessarily changed, but I have grown in a better understanding of viewpoints that are both with and against my own ideas and opinions.  I am very appreciative of this class for opening my eyes to new ways of understanding ethical issues.  My viewpoints have actually changed in some very unexpected ways.

I highly recommend this course to anyone who is interested in discussing and understanding ethics on a deeper, logical level and to anyone who just wants to take a fun class to fulfill their philosophy requirements or who is just looking for an interesting elective.  I think this is a good class for everyone to take.  It certainly requires an open mind, but if you stay open-minded, you are going to get so much out of this class.  Kevin Michael certainly teaches with a lot of love and truly wants us to love one another and to be serious in our search for truth.  And he is very understanding and forgiving as well.  When he tells us he loves us and wants us to spread love and practice forgiveness, he means it and he means it for each and every individual person.  He is a kind and beautiful man and I am very blessed to be in his class. 

Why Do We Have Religion Anyway? - Association for Psychological Science

Why Do We Have Religion Anyway? - Association for Psychological Science

While working on a paper for my Philosophy of Religion class, I stumbled upon the article above.  It's a pretty brief read and it's very interesting.  Basically, it discusses a connection between religious beliefs and self-control which I found to be intriguing.  I definitely recommend it.  But I have a paper due in 52 minutes, so that is all I will be writing tonight.  Ta Ta!

All That Jazz (A re-post from my early ODU blog)

August 31, 2010

Hello again readers!  Welcome to my second blog post!  I apologize if this is kind of boring, but I am still kind of getting in the swing of things at school and figuring out what to blog about, so please bear with me.

This week has been much less chaotic than last week.  I feel like things are settling down a lot and I am starting to get back into school mode.  I kind of forgot about the whole homework thing though, so I ended up staying up way too late the past two nights working on homework at the last minute, so I highly recommend doing homework ahead of time and trying not to procrastinate which is something almost everyone I know struggles with, but that’s going to be one of my scholastic goals this year- to stop procrastinating, so wish me luck with that! 

Yesterday was a pretty good day.  I finished a paper two hours before it was due (I’m terrible.. I know) and I got to hang out with my friend Brittney for a little while between classes and we had subs and coffee (both were delicious by the way!) at the SubConnection/CyberCafe in the Student Center.  It was nice to just kind of catch each other up on our summers and boy problems and how our classes are going and everything.  It was really great :)  I’ve missed her a lot.  She lived on my floor in Fitzpatrick Hall my Freshman year and we were friends immediately after meeting in the first month of school during a black out, but she started commuting last year, so I don’t get to see her as much as I’d like.  I definitely think living on campus is very important to getting the full college experience and make a lot of great friends.  I really loved living in Fitzpatrick since it is an all Freshmen dormitory and my floor was all girls, so I got the chance to meet so many other Freshman girls who also probably didn’t know anyone at the school yet.  This year, I am living in Siena which is amazing so far.  I have some really wonderful roommates and there are a lot of really sweet people who live in this building that I am really happy to be friends with.

In my American Literature class, we started reading The Great Gatsby last week which is one of my favorite books and it’s a fairly easy read, so if you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend that you do!  I was really surprised by some of the insights the teacher and my classmates brought up about the book too.  This is probably the third class I have been in where we’ve studied The Great Gatsby, and it astonishes me that I haven’t gotten sick of it yet, but it seems like there is always something new to learn every time I read or discuss it and I notice something I never really recognized before. 

I actually really like all of my classes so far this semester.  I am really excited for all of the things I am going to learn!  My schedule is a really well-rounded mix too I think.  I am taking an English class, Art History, Philosophy of Good and Evil, Early Christian Writings, and I start a Women in Crime class in October that I am really interested in seeing what that is like, because I haven’t taken any kind of Criminal Justice class.  I am just kind of trying everything right now though and hoping something just clicks, so I can pick a major since everyone always tells me how ridiculous I am for not having one yet haha.

Today was a pretty good day as well except I was exhausted from staying up late which is my own fault I know… I had classes from 8am until 2pm and probably had three coffees total in that time and I will probably get more coffee at dinner tonight too or maybe treat myself to a yummy white mocha latte later in the Griff if I’m feeling some serious self love tonight :-) There were some really interesting discussions in all of my classes today though which is very surprising especially for me since I generally prefer lecture classes, because I do not like to talk much in class and I love taking notes more than I probably should, but we learned some really interesting things about art and tools in the stone age in Art History today and we even got to look at and hold some of the actual tools used by cave men.  It was very fascinating.  And I was really excited for our discussion in Theology class, because we were talking about the earliest Christian writers which includes Saint Ignatius of Antioch who happens to be the patron of the church I grew up in, so I felt a really personal connection with the topic and was simply thrilled to be learning about his life and his teachings and writings.  After my classes, I ordered some text books off Ohio Link which is a really neat program where we are able to check out books from other libraries in Ohio and they are sent to our school for free.  I was really happy I was able to find most of mine on there, so I don’t have to buy all my books this semester which makes my bank account very happy :-D

I also took some time today just to walk around and enjoy the sunshine and the campus.  And I highly recommend that anyone on campus does the same, because it is such a lovely and peaceful little campus to stroll about on :-)