This is the very last blog post that I will have the honor of writing for Franciscan. It is most definitely a bittersweet feeling. Sweet because I know I will be moving on to film school in California and sweet because of the accomplishment of completing four years of undergraduate education. And yet I cannot help but think about the bitter.
There is only two months left in the semester, and it is only now dawning on me how little time I have left with these wonderful people in this amazing place that I have grown to love so much. I feel completely polarized – half the time I’m anxious to get on with life after graduation, while the other half of me doesn’t want to leave behind the fellowship and comforts of Steubenville.
It is March and the last semester of my senior year has kicked into full swing, school work has picked up, rehearsals for the play have begun, and I am preparing to depart on the Honduras Mission. Despite all of that, the most noteworthy thing that has happened is the unusually large amount of snow we’ve experienced on campus. I call it “Snowpocalypse”.
The final semester of my senior year has begun! But there will be plenty of time to talk about that in later posts.
Even before this semester started, the New Year began in a radically new way – I went on mission to Jamaica! My experience in Jamaica truly cannot be summed up in words, but I will try to do my best.
As the semester comes to an end, finals have come and gone and friends are beginning to pack up their things for the semester. Despite all the people leaving and the semester ending, there is one thing that is just beginning: Advent! It is a special time here at Franciscan. I believe that not many people celebrate Christmas as well as Franciscan students.
This semester has been everything it has promised to be and more. Much, much, more. Almost too much. Between household, graduate school applications, classes, work, the play, and my senior thesis, this semester has been filled to the brim with one thing after the next. Looking back on the semester thus far, the extra-full schedule has been well worth it because despite the late nights and early mornings, I feel like I am taking full advantage of the little time I have left here at Franciscan.
After three years of attending Franciscan University I figured that I was prepared for anything that senior year could throw at me. Little did I know that this semester would turn out to be one of the most challenging but also the most rewarding semester thus far. Between my senior thesis, graduate school applications, classes, work, and household, there seemed to be little time left for much else. And yet somehow I managed to add one more extracurricular activity: performing in this year’s drama production, William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost.
It is senior year and nothing is more exciting or more bittersweet than starting your last-first-day of fall semester classes. I can say with all certainty that I will miss greeting friends excitedly after not seeing them all summer and the hustle and bustle of students moving into dorms and saying goodbye to their families. It is funny to think that freshman year it was all so new and overwhelming, but now it just feels like home.
As this semester in Austria is winding down I’ve realized that there a lot of things that my fellow students and I have learned. So instead of listing off places I’ve traveled, with the help of my peers I decided it’d be more fun to make a list of rules that we’ve learned and lived by while living here in Austria.
It has been a crazy couple of weeks full of life-changing moments, traveling, and more traveling. These past few weeks have been full of Our Lady. If you’re wondering what I mean by that, it means that in the past three weeks, the image of the Black Madonna visited the Gaming campus, I spent a week in Lourdes volunteering at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, and I made a pilgrimage to Medjugorje.