Panethiere Moreau Integration 1 Moreau FYE Theo Helm Integration 1 - 15 October 2021 Authentically Myself: Finding Identity in a Foreign Environment Root Belief 1: I believe everyone can learn something new about themselves by listening to the stories of others, being open to their voices and vulnerable with your own story. Throughout the first half of the semester, I have been exposed to many different people, with many different life stories and backgrounds. While I have found people with similar upbringings to me, I’ve also met many individuals who could not differ more in their upbringing when compared to mine—in experience with school, with family, and with faith. While these moments where you don’t appear to have much in common with someone else can sometimes feel awkward or disjointed, the sharing of these pieces of ourselves can help us better understand our own values, personal identity, and beliefs. Being able to acknowledge differences yet still be able to connect and care for others is very important to me and the way I treat my peers. Within these moments, it’s important to acknowledge my upbringing and its shortcomings in understanding others, and I should lean on my compassion to better learn about myself through these unfamiliar interactions. Tapping into compassion “help[s] people learn to feel the proper kind of outrage at injustice, the proper form of reverence before sacrifice, the proper swelling of civic pride, the proper affection for [their] fellows” (“How to Destroy Truth” by David Brooks - Moreau FYE Week Seven). When we open our hearts, we can open our minds to learning about them and how we are actually more similar than we previously thought. To me, caring for others is integral to how I can mold and shape myself and grow my personal understanding of those https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/opinion/patriotism-misinformation.html?referringSource=articleShare who share the world with me, whether on Notre Dame’s campus or internationally. Encouraging others to share these experiences, too, can help us to want to share our life stories with so-called strangers: if we can understand that “what made [us] vulnerable made [us] beautiful” (“The Power of Vulnerability” by Brené Brown - Moreau FYE Week One), we would be much better off understanding one another. Our flaws and our fears shouldn’t be a source for judgement from others, but rather a jumping point for understanding. A special moment during Moreau so far was our sharing of the “Where I’m From” poems in the style of George Ella Lyon (Moreau FYE Week Six). Seeing the pieces of their upbringing that my Moreau classmates found to be essential to their identity was really eye-opening. From small family traditions to life-changing experiences, every single one of us created a different story of ourselves with our experiences, and I think it brought us closer to understanding each other. Root Belief 2: I believe that my connection to faith has a large impact on the way I treat others. Before coming to Notre Dame, I wasn’t really around faith-based learning in high school, so I didn’t really see how impactful my faith was in my decisions on a day-to-day basis until recently. Faith sometimes has been put on my life’s backburner for other things, like school, sports, or even social activities, and I have recently realized that my worst moments, or perhaps the moments where I’m most unlike myself, have been present in times where I’ve felt the most far from my faith. Being at Notre Dame has helped to shape my mentality of faith being something that improves what is already there, especially in my relationships with others. Having some sort of faith tradition and expectation of how to treat others has helped me in overall treating my peers with the same value of compassion as I wish to receive. Incorporating https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0&list=PLmiPsabET-W_hjesjTZaITh2s1WbM-Kd0&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0&list=PLmiPsabET-W_hjesjTZaITh2s1WbM-Kd0&index=3 faith more heavily in how I interact with others on a daily basis, whether it’s my closest friends or complete strangers, being skilled with more hope in my day-to-day routine has filled me with a new found confidence in making and sustaining relationships, for “hope is the confidence that we are moving toward light, not darkness; joy, not sorrow; life, not death” (“Faith Brings Light to a Dark World” by David Fagerberg - Moreau FYE Week Three). Root Belief 3: I believe it is more important to be a good person than an accomplished/successful person. Simply put, “Our lives are not our resumes” (“Two Notre Dames: Your Holy Cross Education” by Fr. Kevin Grove, C.S.C - Moreau FYE Week Five); everything that we do does not have to be in the hopes of recognition. The good that we do should be for the sake of doing good, not appearing good. It can be really easy to fall into the mentality of reducing yourself to just your accomplishments—after the stress of college applications and marketing yourself to top universities, being concerned with accomplishment is somewhat-ingrained in the high-achieving high-school brain. Getting caught up in the respectability of superficial accomplishments can be overwhelming in the grand scheme of things. Constantly trying to be “better” than other people instead of trying to better other people and yourself causes more harm than good in the long run. The capability for compassion you may have is instead replaced with competitiveness in an unhealthy way, and things that are good at heart cannot be done without the help of others: “Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore we must be saved by love” (Quote from Reinhold Neibuhr in “Should You Live for your Resume or Your Eulogy?” by David Brooks - Moreau FYE Week Two). Doing things that are kind in spirit and for the sake of other people, helping them out, and supporting their own personal growth is one of the best ways https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=859bc1a8-0d0f-4eb4-a1c1-d0a45c429187 https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=859bc1a8-0d0f-4eb4-a1c1-d0a45c429187 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlLWTeApqIM to create life-long relationships with those around you. At Notre Dame, being surrounded by so many people who care so much about others and how to treat your fellow students, faculty, and staff here and in the real world is such an important skill; the first few weeks of college have shown me how important these relationship-enhancing behaviors are in building my own community within Notre Dame. Throughout the first month of school, and likely throughout all four years I will be here, identifying the types of people I want to be around has become something I’ve found needs to be a priority. Surrounding myself with good people who care for others not for the sake of just making themselves appear better, but also to help others is something I actively seek out in my relationships. In week four of Moreau, learning about the different signs of positive and negative friendships has been really helpful for me when navigating my blossoming friendships here at Notre Dame throughout the first semester and beyond—having friendships which “are the ones where you leave with a smile on your face, knowing you’re both growing to be better people and that you’re helping each other get there” have made my transition into college so much easier (“5 Signs You’re in a Toxic Friendship” by Olivia T. Taylor - Moreau FYE Week Four). These people, who help me bring joy to my life by not only helping me, but also helping others, help me define the good I want to emulate, and to me have the most respectable characters on campus. https://grottonetwork.com/navigate-life/relationships/signs-of-toxic-friendships/