Today was quad day on campus. Each year I try to go out and walk it to see what the students are up to. This year I was happy about some changes I saw. The Catholic ministry booth, in addition to the students running it, had priests walking about meeting the students. I saw them mingling with the students and walking the quad getting to meet people. In years past it was always the nuns who had this role and they kept to the confines of the booth. So I was very pleased to see them taking that extra step to really try to engage with the student body. The next thing I liked was that the prolife booth was being run only by girls. To me that was a plus because so often when I find myself having these types of conversations with girls, if they find they can't get around my arguments they'll just throw out the 'you're a guy card' and reject everything I say because of it. So having a significantly large group of girls running that booth was encouraging to see.
But a part of quad day is not just the booths but also the students themselves. As I was leaving I passed by a girl wearing a 'I heart boobs' (in the 'I heart NY' style) t-shirt. After she passed I started thinking about that shirt. First I was very confused because I thought that should be something an immature college guy would wear, not a girl. Then I thought that maybe it was part of a new campaign for breast cancer awareness. And then I had the 'ooooooooh' moment.
After quad day I went to a cookout at the rectory. I go to this every year because I'm not about to pass up a free meal. Although each year I start feeling a bit older and more out of place. But thankfully, I had some people to sit with and I ended up having dinner with Dr. Howell. To my non-Catholic friends, Dr. Howell is pretty well known among the Catholic community in the United States, and a previous professor of mine while I was in the School of Theology, so it was very nice getting to catch up with him. Although it can be tiring talking to him. He always seems to make convesations pertinent to very important matters. If I wanted to talk to him about the latest Mario Brothers, he'd probably turn the conversation into a discussion on the social implications, good or bad, the past twenty years of technology has had on generation x and y. Tonight he wanted to talk about the Polish community of Chicago, charter schools, and the status of our school's woman's volley ball team. And it was really nice. I always like getting to share some time with my professors outside of the classroom. I find that time can serve as a great motivation to re-focus on my own studies.
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