Eighty-two Convent of the Sacred Heart seniors will walk down the mansion steps June 7 in beautiful white long gowns. Most likely, all of us will simultaneously be praying to God that we don’t trip as we flash smiles for the hundreds of cameras. For me however, I know that this smile will be hard to sustain without tears streaming down my face. Thus, the accomplishment and the important milestone for me might very well be my waterproof mascara working. What all of us, however, are celebrating June 7 is not just the grades or awards that we worked hard to receive, but rather the lessons that we have learned and the people that we have become.
Take for instance math class. Despite the hours spent preparing for an exam, most likely, the math teacher will throw in a new problem, which we don’t exactly know how to approach. But, it’s worth five points, so we wrestle through it, show as much work as possible, and hope for the best. Now whether or not the answer is correct, the lesson is simply that we will not always know what we are doing or what to expect. We will be challenged in our future, and will not always have a textbook next to us with step by step instructions or guidelines. But, we are all strong enough to try and to give it our best shot whether credit is awarded or not.
In Senior Seminar class, we have read several texts from a variety of authors with the intention of gaining knowledge about several aspects of both philosophy and English. After each 55-minute class, I would always walk out of the room and seriously feel ten times smarter. Whether we were discussing Plato’s philosophy, attempting to understand the “Double-slit” experiment, or simply being inspired by peace activists such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, we learned how to be better people. David Foster Wallace taught us that we are in control of not only our destiny, but our thoughts. We choose how we view the world around us, and we have the freedom to decide what we want to believe and what is important to us. We have the option to, “…see and interpret everything through the lens of self,” or we can look at life through the eyes of others.
These lessons do not just ring true for math classes and Seminar classes. I am confident, that as a class, we will succeed in college not only because we have mastered the course material, but because we have had inspiring, dedicated, and intelligent role models leading us the whole way. So on behalf of the entire class of 2013, thank you to all of the teachers who have taught us lessons that we will carry with us for the rest of our lives.
Though I have grown only half an inch since freshmen year, while some of my classmates have grown nearly half a foot, I know that all of us have grown into stronger and better people because of our Sacred Heart education.  It was the class that we chose to actively listen and participate in, the lessons we chose to learn from, the teachers that inspired us in more ways than imaginable, the challenges that we chose to tackle, the mistakes that we were brave enough to make, and the obstacles that we faced in life that have made us who we are today.
 
– Catherine Considine, Online-editor