University of Dayton - MyLife

Goodbye, UD

So, after the second week of being an adult, I'm beginning to realize how good I had it. Without a doubt, I worked plenty hard in collge, but no matter how hard things got in college, there was always someone in the room over, the house next door, or with an office door open waiting and ready to listen. It's been harder to find that here in the real world. I still have wonderful friends ready to sit on their phones for hours at a time, but the immediacy of their personal and individualized attention has changed. Our schedules are different, the time zones that we live in are different, and hugs are much harder to come by. Working with adults is much different than I imagined. A mentor out of college is very different than a mentor in college and my lunch breaks were much longer and more relaxing at UD than they have been at work. Yes, it has been a transition, a good transition, a hard transition, a complicated transition.

Lucky for me, I have a support system that has continued to follow me through time zones. Although now, the support comes to me in different ways, it's there. Last week, I received a phone call from my freshman year advisor, Mrs. Ferguson. Mrs. Ferguson was more than an advisor to me at UD, she was a mentor, and inspiration and a friend. She called to see how I was doing, how teaching was going and to let me know she was proud of me, and cheering me on. Mrs. Ferguson, the reason I went to UD, called to make sure that I was succeeding in what UD had spent four years preparing me.

Lori Dorn, my cooperating teacher during student teacher has been with me on the journey out of college 100%. She has called to help with teacher questions, life questions and laughs. The community you meet at UD extends much farther than the campus. The family extends from the campus to the companies, the schools, the donors, the alumni, and many more people who have the power to impact the lives of UD students in ways that I have never seen people do before, and have never seen anyone do yet.

I work in a school right outside the city with much of the same concerns that city schools are facing, and I am having a wonderful experience. I was hired by a principal who, although he didn't call it this, wants the middle school I am working at to be the same kind of community that the UD campus gave its students. I have found a home. I am confident in what I am doing is going to make a difference come state testing time. The research and classes that the teacher education program offered me have enabled me to bring to the classroom a strong classroom management system, and the high expectations my students have been rising to meet. Today, I am writing two-week progress reports and grading my students' weekly quizzes. As I go through and giving stickers to the many A and B papers, I realize that the skills I have tested them on are skills that no one believed they had. That has been the best reward so far.

I miss UD, I miss the family and community that was constantly there. However, the UD family's long-distance support, their continued e-mails, their strong and vibrant alumni and their mission has instilled in me the self-confidence I have to touch the lives of children and through them, the future of our world.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share with you some of the amazing things UD has offered me. Thank you for reading about the support, the community, and the passion that the UD family gives, asking nothing in return (except for maybe tuition money, but even that can be negotiated). I am who I am today because of UD and the Marianist Tradition by which they operate. I am a Flyer who has been let go with a purpose.

Aug 27, 2006 12:39 PM Permalink