Moreau Capstone Integration - Moreau FYE 4/27/2022 Carrying Out the Murphy Mission As my first year at Notre Dame comes to an end, I am satisfied with how I have begun to grow as a person. I have discovered subjects that interest me, met people I have come to know as friends, and most importantly, I have begun to plan my future. There is so much that I want to accomplish in this world as a student as well as after graduation. To do this, as I have learned over the course of these two semesters, it takes conviction and dedication to one’s mission. As an institution, Notre Dame “is dedicated to the pursuit and sharing of truth for its own sake” in addition to many other responsibilities (“University of Notre Dame Mission Statement” by The University of Notre Dame - Moreau FYE Week 13). In much of the same way, I have my own responsibilities and obligations that I have used to craft my following mission statement: As a student, my mission is to learn as much as I can in these four years and apply my knowledge towards helping others and improving the world. I want to make sure that I use my experience as an engineer to make a difference in the world and improve lives for everyone around me. As a son, my mission is to take care of my parents just like they have taken care of me for these past two decades. I want to ensure that they have a great life after retirement and that I can provide them with everything that they need. As a friend, my mission is to make sure that I can be there for the people that I surround myself with and ensure that they never feel alone. Additionally, I want to be a source of positivity in their lives and ensure that they can benefit from having me in their lives the same way that I benefit from them being in my life. In the future, my mission is to always be the best version of myself that I can be and continue to always work and grow in all facets of my life. I want my kids to one day be able to look up to me as a role model. I broke down my mission for my next three years into four different roles: my role as a student, as a son, as a friend, and as my future self. I plan to carry out this mission in the best ways possible and ensure that I accomplish who I want to be on this planet. As a student, I want to ensure that I set aside time for myself to relax and recharge during these next three years. I have come to learn over the past couple of months how important rest is for me as a student and I want to make it a mission to give myself the off-time I need over the next three years. As humans, “the need for an empty space, a pause, is something we have all felt in our bones; it’s the rest in a piece of music that gives it resonance and shape” and I want to https://www.nd.edu/about/mission/ ensure that I am listening to what I truly need (“Why We Need to Slow Down Our Lives” by Pico lyer - Moreau FYE Week One). Furthermore, as a pupil in the coming years, I want to expand my network and become better friends with those that I am going to be studying with. Similar to the way that Father Hesburgh made friends with everyone around him and held no enemies during his life, I want to be friends with all of those that share the same interests as me. During the Civil Rights movement, he even stated “I’ve made friends with soldiers on both sides. I just don’t want to see my friends dead” (“Hesburgh” by Jerry Barca and Christine O’Malley - Moreau FYE Week Two). While as a student my friendships might not be as integral as the ones Father Hesburgh made, I still want to be a well connected student in the future. As a student, I also want to pursue subjects and topics that I enjoy learning about and that motivate me to be the best student that I can be at all times. As I have discerned over this past year, engineering is definitely the field that I want to pursue because of the joy that it brings me. For me, mechanical engineering is an “impulsion, a pressure to move forward, to do more, to expend oneself more deeply, more richly, to open ones talents even more widely than one had before” (“Meet the Nun That Wants You to Remember That You Will Die” by Ruth Graham - Moreau FYE Week Three). I cannot wait to continue on my education mission over the next three years and continue learning about what I love. As a son, I want to provide my parents with the same experience and care that they offered me when I was growing up. I feel like a lot of sons and daughters do not appreciate what their parents do for them enough and they think that one action of gratitude towards their parents is “just checking a box and moving on” (“Navigating Your Career Journey” by Meruelo Family Center for Career Development - Moreau FYE Week Four). What I mean by this is that people think that simply thanking their parents is enough to repay them for everything that they have sacrificed for you to have the best life possible. I want to make sure that I can take care of them the way that they took care of me. As a son, I also want to be conscious of what I am like within the context of my family. I feel like there are times where I am separating who I am around my friends with who I am around my family and it makes me feel like I am being an inauthentic person. Since “there is a lot you do not understand about yourself until people point it out,” I want my parents to be able to help me be a better son and person in general (“Week 5 QQC” by - Moreau Week Five). In continuance with this theme, as a son, I also want to be able to reflect on myself and my role within the family. What this means is periodically taking time to be introspective and assess how I have been as a member of my family. I want to make it my mission to understand that “the act of thinking about ourselves isn’t necessarily correlated with knowing ourselves” (“The Right Way to Be Introspective” by Tasha Eurich - Moreau FYE Week Six). In order to be https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/ https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=10159379-7eca-4549-8581-ab9500c9ecd9 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html https://undergradcareers.nd.edu/navigating-your-career-journey---moreau/ https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40253/assignments/49146?module_item_id=143014 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40253/modules/items/143033 the most helpful person I can be to others, I must first master how to reflect on and understand my own being. As a friend, I want to be there for those I consider to be the closest people in my life at all times. Additionally, I want to be able to do everything that I can to help them out in every way possible and simply be the best friend that they could ever ask for. I feel as though recently I have become more detached from my lifelong friends back home, so I want to make it my mission “to rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters orbiting around us” (“Why the Only Future Worth Building Includes Everyone” by Pope Francis - Moreau FYE Week Seven). As a friend, I also want to be able to relate with everyone around me and form some form of meaningful relationships with every individual that I can. In my eyes, “we are only as impactful in changing the world as the relationships we make with others” so it is essential that I become a friend to as many people as I possibly can (“Integration 3 - ” by Nolan Murphy - Moreau FYE Week Eight). My mission in the next years at Notre Dame is to truly expand my network of friends and be friendly to everyone that I possibly can. As a friend, I also want to be as inclusive and understanding as possible. This will require me to have a lot of empathy but I want to ensure that those around me feel as comfortable as possible even though I might not be able to fully understand their situation. I want to be a companion to others and promote “the idea that [I am] working to help people ‘over there,’ in recognition of the fact that ‘over there’ and ‘here’ are intertwined”, or in other words, realize that when I help others and befriend them, we are link that connects the human race as a whole (“Teaching Accompaniment: A Learning Journey Together ” by Steve Reifenberg - Moreau FYE Week Nine). In the future, I want to make myself more available to the ones that I hold close to me, whether it be family or friends. I have sort of realized that I have become much more closed off recently and I want my future to include everyone that I hold close to my heart. Week 10’s material closely relates to this and the idea “I started to pay more attention to my friendships, and realized that I had become guarded and shallow in all of them” unknowingly (“Growing Up Gay and Catholic” by Jacob Walsh - Moreau FYE Week Ten). Additionally, I want for my future self to be wiser and more aware of the social dangers around me. What I am really worried about is the potential for my future self to become too close minded and stubborn. I have learned about echo chambers and how “bubbles become echo chambers when groups give up on tolerating diversity of opinion” and I worry that I may subconsciously fall into one (“How To Avoid an Echo Chamber” by Dr. Paul Blaschko - Moreau FYE Week Eleven). I want to make it my mission to avoid falling into traps like these that could turn me into a close minded person. https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40253/assignments/49079 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hZbSdVImfn2hZDqMrdL96dZCNOtHuf6C-lg3sH-Rs30/edit https://grottonetwork.com/keep-the-faith/community/reflective-narrative-about-being-gay-and-catholic/?utm_source=moreau&utm_medium=class&utm_campaign=spring_2022 https://grottonetwork.com/keep-the-faith/community/reflective-narrative-about-being-gay-and-catholic/?utm_source=moreau&utm_medium=class&utm_campaign=spring_2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaIVxQcqnLs&t=1s Finally, in the future, I want to be courageous and unwavering in the face of the inevitable challenges that I will have to deal with. For me, this includes using my own voice and conviction to be the change that I want to witness in the world. Additionally, I want to make it part of my mission that if I witness injustice “and I can do something. I must do something” to help prevent it (“Dean G. Marcus Cole: 'I am George Floyd. Except, I can breathe. And I can do something'” by Dean G Marcus Cole - Moreau FYE Week Twelve). Overall, I hope that I can use what I have learned over these past couple of months and start working towards the mission I have outlined for myself over the next couple of years. https://law.nd.edu/news-events/news/dean-g-marcus-cole-i-am-george-floyd-except-i-can-breathe-and-i-can-do-something/ https://law.nd.edu/news-events/news/dean-g-marcus-cole-i-am-george-floyd-except-i-can-breathe-and-i-can-do-something/