Moreau Integration 1 - MLM Moreau First Year Experience Integration One Assignment Fall 2021 Maria Luisa Montenegro A Brazilian Girl Learning To Grow Under The Dome Root Belief #1: I believe that I am more than my grades. I grew up dependent on academic validation. My earliest memories of school consisted of coming home with a smile on my face to show to my parents how I got the highest grade of the class on that math test in the second grade. As the years went by and the subjects got harder, that “necessary” academic validation became gradually more painful to achieve. I needed my outstanding grades to get into college, to be hired for that selective internship, but what I realized later, is that the main reason why I wanted those grades was to fulfill a void within myself. The endless search for As brought to my life one huge A that I couldn’t fight on my own - Anxiety. At one point, my academics were all that mattered. I was a wreck, and I knew I needed to change. That’s when I encountered the value in my Adam 2, the side of me that works to live, but doesn’t live to work. The side of me that appreciates the beautiful and small things in life. The side of me that is bigger and more complex than my resume. (Should you live for your résumé… or your eulogy?” by David Brooks - Moreau FYE Week Two) Just like Brooks stated, I feel like in our society, we are raised to be all Adam 1. Living to work and sometimes forgetting the true meaning of life. I usually ask myself: “why am I doing what I’m doing?” The true objective is happiness, but how can we find happiness without appreciating the little things in life? At the end of the day my main goal is to make my Adam 2 self shine more, but that’s not easy. Yet, it’s nice to know that this isn't just me. As I discussed with my Moreau friends, coming to Notre Dame resprests great academic achievement, but the classes are way harder than in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlLWTeApqIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlLWTeApqIM high school, and the first grades were way lower. It was a shock, truly. However, grades are not the only reason why we are here. As Fr. Kevin said in his speech for our Week 5 QQC: “Our lives are not our resumes. It’s just being who we are as Holy Cross, letting faith and reason both in their fullness be able to apply in every part of our lives” (“Two Notre Dames: Your Holy Cross Education” by Fr. Kevin Grove - Moreau FYE Week Five) We are Notre Dame students because we are a source of good in the world, and we are bigger and better than random alphabet letters in our report cards. Root Belief #2: I believe that vulnerability is a strength. “Be strong!” That's something so common to hear, but what does it truly mean? When I was little, I thought strength was the ability to gracefully deal with your problems by yourself, but then I realized that this would be a sad and utopic reality. I have to say, I learned this in the hard way. I always had this habit of saying: “Let me fix that” or “I will deal with this on my own, don’t worry,” but what I didn’t realize was that by dealing with hardships alone, the inability to share my feelings, made me suffer one hundred times more. So I had the “brilliant” idea of simply ignoring my sad feelings. I would ignore my anxiety, ignore my pain, ignore my loneliness, and then I realized I was ignoring the joy, the happiness, and the beauty of life. Just like Dr. Brown says: “You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, or emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when you numb those, we numb joy; we numb gratitude; we numb happiness.” (“The Power of Vulnerability” by Brené Brown - Moreau FYE Week One) Throughout my college application process last year, the stress was so overwhelming that I ended up shutting down my feelings. At the time it was something completely involuntary, but now that I look back, I can clearly see the moment where I simply “stopped feeling.” I did not care about my appearance, my mental health, my friends, my social life or anything at all. Now, I’m in the process of taking my feelings out of anesthesia and finding the value in my vulnerability. The main way I’m able to do this is through my healthy relationships with my new 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=X4Qm9cGRub0&feature=youtu.be Notre Dame friends. I learned that it is okay to ask for help, and your true friend will come with an open heart and open arms to be by your side. Thankfully, I grew up in a very loving household, and always knew what a healthy relationship consisted of, but unfortunately, I engaged myself in friendships where I couldn’t fully be my vulnerable self. As I saw in Week 4, the text from the “Red Flag Campaign” states that: “People in healthy relationships respect each other. They can talk honestly and freely to each other and share power and control over decisions. They trust and support each other and respect each other’s independence. In contrast, an unhealthy relationship is unbalanced. One partner (a person in the relationship) tries to control the other.” (“Healthy Vs. Unhealthy Relationships” by Red Flag Campaign - Moreau FYE Week Four) Throughout my 19 years of life, I have already encountered friends that constantly wanted to put me down and sustained a unilateral relationship. I was lucky enough to catch the red flags early, but if I stayed in this friendship for longer, my mental health could’ve been severely harmed. Now, I understand the unique balance between commitment with yourself, the others around you, and your feelings. Our ability to be vulnerable and communicate our suffering and weaknesses is our greatest asset towards growth. Root Belief #3: I believe my culture is my greatest quality. “Oh, you are from Brazil! I bet you like soccer!” Although that might seem like a harmless statement, being a Latin American girl inserted in an international environment, I have faced a lot of stereotypes. Some of them are just funny, but there is one point that it just becomes offensive. People forget to ask the extra question and just assume that the place you are from fully represents your character. Don’t get me wrong, it’s normal to have stereotypes pop in your mind once in a while. As Keith Payne writes , it doesn’t make you racist, sexist, or whatever-ist. The problem is when you observe a prejudgment pattern in your mind and don’t do anything to correct that. (“How to Think about ‘Implicit Bias’” by Keith Payne - Moreau FYE Week Seven) Since I got here to Notre Dame, I remember very vividly, on Domerfest, a few girls asked me if https://drive.google.com/a/nd.edu/file/d/0B93cIKOnINCLS1JpUzZ5Q1JseGs/view?usp=sharing https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/ my house was located in the forest and if we had contact with wild animals. Brazil’s biodiversity is beautiful, indeed, but people need to step out of the way the media portrays developing nations, and create their own opinions. Brazil is not the poor, sad, and hungry country that some believe it to be. Instead, it is one of the most economically powerful countries in the world, with endless amounts of smart and ethical leaders. Therefore, in Week 6 of Moreau, inspired by George Ella Lyon and her idea of where I’m from lists, I took a moment to appreciate my origins (“Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon - Moreau FYE Week Six). I closed my eyes and visualized the beautiful beach in front of my building, the warm hug of my mom and the delicious food we eat on Sunday lunches. This activity was super interesting, because it made me realize that my surroundings transformed me into the human being I am today, and I’m proud to say I come from the northeast of Brazil. My culture makes my perspectives rich and diverse, and I love to share my knowledge with others. In fact, while we were sharing our poems in the Moreau class, I loved to explain a little bit of what Brazil is like to my friends and colleagues. They were certainly impressed about the multiple realities they could encounter in a big country like that. Root Belief #4: I believe that faith makes my journey brighter. Last, but not least, my main core belief, and the reason that I’m here: my faith in God. For week 3 we had the pleasure of hearing from Fr. Pete, where he compared our relationship with faith to shoe knots: “Our relationship with faith has to be just like we deal with the knots in real life. Be patient. It’s always more complicated to figure it out when you are in a rush” (“The Role of Faith in Our Story” by Fr. Pete - Moreau FYE Week Three). My idea of faith changed a lot during the years. Coming here to Notre Dame, I talk to God everyday, about my happy moments and about my worries. I never expect an immediate answer, but my faith and trust allow me to live knowing that God has my back. Through my faith, I know that I’m going in the right way. The idea that God has a plan, makes my life brighter. For example, this week I was in my Calculus class, and http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcZMeqWWOIs&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=UniversityofNotreDameCampusMinistry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcZMeqWWOIs&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=UniversityofNotreDameCampusMinistry amongst the crazy derivatives and midterm stress, I caught myself in an anxiety attack. I stopped, breathed, and remembered that God always has the best intentions and will never put me through something that I can’t handle. I remembered Fr. Pete’s shoe knot comparison, and just had patience. Turns out days later my test went really well. In fact, the day I got into Notre Dame just reinforced how much my faith is present in my spiritual and professional journey. I was SO happy to get my decision back, but then I was like: “is it the right place for me?”. The next morning I woke up and asked God for a sign. I wasn’t expecting anything specific. Then I go to order food at my favorite dessert place and I see a CHOCOLATE SHAPED SHAMROCK. I literally got chills, because I order in the same place every weekend and I had never seen it. It ended up being so good that on Monday I went to get another one, but it was simply gone. This story is so crazy and insane, but I know I was meant to see that desert at the time. It’s silly, but my faith, along with God’s signs, made me confident of my decision. Thank you so much for this opportunity to explore my beliefs. I feel like this might not sound genuine, but it truly is. I’ve been struggling a lot the last couple of weeks with missing home and my tremendous amount of workload. It was priceless to sit down for a few hours and just appreciate what brought me here and the human being that I am :)