Week 13: Going Retro

Could it be? The last blog post of the semester? My, how time flies. Finals are but a week away, and that means it’s time to start reviewing – taking out the books, making study guides, doing practice problems, and all that jazz. It also means that it’s a good time to review the semester itself.

This kind of blogging was a whole new experience for me. My freshman seminar had a blog, but we mostly just replied in the comments section to whatever our professor’s question was for the week. My English class last year had a blog, but that whole idea died out a couple weeks into the semester.

This is the first time that I’ve ever written my own blog. Which isn’t to say that blogging was foreign to me. I’ve read my fair share of blogs, and tried my best to capture their friendly, informal tone while still maintaining my own specific brand of quirky, borderline anachronistic style. I hope I’ve done a satisfactory job for y’all (i.e., those who are still reading, which may just be Fr. Dziak). I know I’ve certainly had fun with it.

Well, sometimes it was fun. Other times it was a little tedious, and it was often emotional. I don’t mean to say that I typed these up while bawling my eyes out each week, but a lot of the questions really made me think. I honestly wouldn’t be able to tell you what caused it all, but some combination of the class, this blog, and my never-ending academics has really thrown my worldview into turmoil. That is, with each passing day I grow less and less sure of what I once believed in.

I swear that’s less melodramatic than it sounds. I guess my world hasn’t been toppled so much as expanded – much like I imagine the Europeans felt when they discovered the Americas and realized that they weren’t the majority on Earth. I kind of like the feeling, though. When nothing is certain, it opens up all new opportunities that would have once seemed impossible. I just wish it didn’t affect my studies.

I would definitely say that the posts I most enjoyed writing about were the ones where I used my imagination to visualize them. You know, like the one about Tamales Point, or like last week’s on the 40-year-old me. Maybe that’s just how I am. As a science major, I’m so used to writing lab reports and other technical papers that I just find it much more engaging to write about something I can feel as well as know. I guess Ignatius was on to something when he advocated a balance of heart and head.

Don’t get me wrong, the other questions were plenty stimulating. I definitely believe that it was good to have so much self-reflection. But I found myself trying to explain why I felt a certain way or the cause of my actions, as such questions naturally elicit. It was those subjects that didn’t need explanation which I found most telling when I went back and read them. I didn’t need to EXPLAIN WHY; I just had to DESCRIBE HOW (Dr. Kargol’s Intro to Quantum class FTW).

Maybe that’s the key. I could write straight from the heart in the moment, and then look back on it with a clear head and analyze it, instead of trying to do both at the same time and just muddling things up.

But now I’m just rambling. In closing, I would definitely say that blogging about Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuits, and all they teach was a valuable experience in my spiritual development. Like I said at the beginning, I’ve stored away several of Ignatius’s beliefs into my collection of ideas that form my worldview. And I’m definitely glad to have the addition.

I know Fr. Dziak had a hard time keeping up with all these blogs – considering that nearly the entire class elected to have one – but I do feel like it’s an indispensable tool for one’s spiritual development in this class if one takes it seriously. That said, determining how deeply one reflects with these kinds of questions is so subjective that it becomes almost impossible to accurately judge who’s taking the process seriously.

Maybe keep it as an option, but, in addition, have a shorter paper (like half the length of the final paper alone) due at the end reflecting on the blogging experience? I’m not sure. I think it should be available, but not so seemingly simple that people will want to take it as the easy way out.

I hope everyone enjoyed my silliness. If you hear from me again, it probably won’t be on this blog. But now that I’ve gotten a taste for it, and with summer on the horizon, you may find me blogging elsewhere. I’ll see y’all on the other side of Finals. Until then:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will – all that I have and call my own. You have given it all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace. That is enough for me.

Week 12: A Day in the Life

Only one more blog post after this one, if you can believe it. Well, the last post for our Ignatius Loyola class. Who knows, though? I don’t think it would be totally inconceivable that I might blog over the summer. If it’s anything like last summer, I’ll certainly have the time.

As we dive into our final topic of the semester (Jesuit education), Fr. Dziak wants us to look into the future – presumably to see where our own Jesuit education will take us. What would an average day be for the 40-year-old Cameron McCormick? Just imagine…

5:58 AM. That’s what the fluorescent green display reads as I stare at the clock on my bedside table. My sleep cycle is so routine that, once again, I’ve woken up mere minutes before my alarm is set to go off. When it does make the first sound, my arm shoots out from under the covers and smacks the ovular button on top.

I carefully slide out of bed, trying hopelessly to avoid the floorboards that creak. I glance at my wife of twelve years as her ribcage moves gently up and down. She says that my morning routine never disturbs her, but I always wonder.

As I walk to the gym, bag slung over my shoulder, I take in the brisk autumn morning. The douglas maples are a bouquet of bright yellows, deep reds, and warm oranges, made all the more pungent by the first streaks of white on their branches. Some people are rushing off to work, but for the most part the streets are empty. I like it: being alone with my thoughts, the fall of my footsteps and the sting in my cheeks reminding me of how alive I am.

I swim laps for an hour or so, taking breaks to soak in the hot tub. After tearing my patellar tendon, that’s about all I can do. I look at all the twenty-somethings working themselves to death to keep thin, and I laugh to myself as I remember being that age and totally unaware that I could eat all the junk I wanted and I would still burn it all off in a day. Yes, youth is certainly wasted on the young.

When I open the door to our small, two-story home, my wife is up and cooking breakfast. I run upstairs to take a quick shower, inevitably getting stuck contorting myself to stare at the top of my head. It’s gotten to the point that I strongly consider cutting my losses and just buzzing the whole thing. Maybe when spring comes around.

I sit down to my usual morning meal: a glass of 2% milk, a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal, and an omelette – egg whites only, what with my family’s history of high cholesterol. My son and daughter run downstairs shortly thereafter to shovel down their own bowls of oatmeal before school. I ask them what they’re most looking forward to today and, as usual, they both shrug their shoulders and say, “I-D-K.”

I clean up the dishes and tell them to “Make it a great day,” as my wife whisks them off to school on her way to work. I pack up my briefcase and gather my things, carefully cradling the plans I spent all last night drawing up. My wife reminded me once again that I should switch off from “work mode” when I get home. And, once again, I ignored her sage advice. It seems neither of us will ever learn.

Apparently my wife used the charger last night. That’s okay, though. My car is pretty small and I think I have at least enough energy to get to work, where I can charge up again. After setting down my things at my desk, I immediately take the plans to my supervisor, excited to hear what he thinks about them. I gingerly tap my knuckles against his door as I walk in and tell him about my hard work. I hand him the cardboard tube and, without even opening it, he sets it down on his desk. “That’s great,” he says, “but one of the sites doesn’t understand our instructions. Something about our materials. That’s where I need you now.” So I drive across town, working through lunch, trying to explain that, no, you can’t use cyanoacrylate glue with Polynanofoam© baffles because the alkyl groups dissolve it.

I pick up my son and daughter from school and take them to their gymnastics class. They always look so excited to see me, but sometimes I have to wonder if they’re running towards me or away from school. This is the happiest part of my day: driving with my two beautiful children; taking them to something my wife and I decided for them but which they, themselves, actually enjoy; watching them jump and tumble and play with their friends in the wonder that is human interaction. After class I let them play in the foam pit a while. As I stare at the foam shapes, all I can think about is work.

When we get home, I fix them an afternoon snack of apple slices and sticks of celery and carrot, with a glob of peanut butter for dipping. Then I send them off to do homework, reminding them that they should try to work the problem out as much as they can, or ask me for help, before resorting to the Cloud. They just kind of mumble in noncommittal compliance as they take their bags to the living room.

It’s at about this time that my wife gets home. I ask her how her day was and she says it was “fine.” She reciprocates the question and I give the same generic answer. I make us some tea and we sit by the window, enjoying each other’s company and talking about whatever happens to pop into our head – neighborhood gossip, her parents’ trip to Australia, our Christmas plans. Eventually it grows dark and I know it’s time to start on dinner. Tonight I’m making linguine carbonara.

As I pull out the dried pasta, my wife looks at me frustratedly – we’re supposed to be on that gluten-free diet this month. But I just smile back at her and tell her that I remember full well, and that I made sure to get gluten-free pasta. By the time dinner is ready, the kids have already finished their homework and are plugged into their Playstation 5. When they don’t respond to my calls, I walk into the room, take their glasses off, and tell them to clean up for dinner. As we sit around the table, we each say what our favorite thing was about today. I say picking up our children from school; for my wife, going out to lunch with her coworkers; and, expectedly, our children both don’t know. But with a little encouragement, our son says gymnastics while our daughter admits that it was art class.

My wife clears the table and goes to watch TV with our children, while I unpack my briefcase and get to work on the progress reports that need to be typed up. I’m so engrossed in my work that at first I don’t even comprehend what my wife means when she says it’s the children’s bedtime. When I walk into their room, they’ve already bathed, changed into their pajamas, brushed their teeth, and are lying in their beds.

I kiss them each goodnight, and remind them to fill their dreams with music, because they have piano lessons tomorrow. I turn off the light, leave the door barely ajar, and head back downstairs to my computer, while my wife flips through the channels for something to watch. A couple hours pass before it’s time for us to go to bed as well. We go through our usual routine of teeth brushing, face washing, alarm setting, before dragging ourselves into bed and, with a gentle goodnight kiss, finally falling fast asleep in wait of what tomorrow will bring.

Week 11: That'll Learn Ya

I know it’s been a long time since I last posted something. You can blame one part of that on my gluttony for academic punishment and two parts on nature-induced amnesia. That is to say, for much of our Easter Break, I’ve been getting my final papers and projects out of the way so that I’m not as pressured come May. These past few days, however, I’ve been lucky enough to find myself in rural Mississippi, working the land Green Acres-style in between bouts of berry picking and fishing.

And I went to the smallest church I’ve ever seen for Easter Mass. Speaking of which, I hope everyone enjoyed their Sunday. I had forgotten how long it had been since I last had a proper Easter brunch.

Anyway, I’ll try to shift both my mind and this post into academic mode, despite their reluctance to do so. When we get back, our Ignatius Loyola class will be shifting into academic mode, too. No, I’m not saying that we’ve been slacking off this whole semester. Wednesday we’ll begin our study of Jesuit education.

It’s an interesting notion that we need to be taught about Jesuit education, even though we attend a Jesuit institution. But that’s one of the things I love about the Jesuits and about Loyola in particular: they’re not pushy about their Jesuit identity. Rather, their tenets and beliefs are all-pervasive in their words and actions.

In particular, I recall my first semester at Loyola – I think even my first month. All of the freshmen were called upon to perform an act of service for the New Orleans community. Those who came were divided into groups, corresponding to the particular act of service they were to perform.

I can’t recall all the groups, but suffice it to say that they were rather variegated. My own group was sent to a cemetery, not to dig graves, but to dig drainage trenches, clear rubbish, and generally clean it up.

It was backbreaking work, I don’t mind telling you. What was worse, it seemed to go on forever. In fact, the trench I helped dig was probably only extended by a meter and a half in the several hours we were there. Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly an experience that endeared me to the Jesuits.

But it was on the ride back to campus that I gained my first glimpse into Jesuit education. As we sat in the bus, everyone physically and morally exhausted, we were informed that the cemetery was owned and operated by the city, for those who can’t afford to bury their loved ones in a private plot. As such, no one really takes care of it, because it’s the relatives of those buried who are responsible for its maintenance, most of whom don’t have the means.

We were asked to reflect on this, and consider how much our effort, however small, might mean to the families who would otherwise visit a grave covered with trash or flooded with rainwater.

Commitment to service and special concern for the poor and oppressed may be only small aspects of the Jesuits, but they are the ones that I recall whenever contemplating what it means to attend a Jesuit institution. They let me know that all my work is worthwhile in times when I’m unsure; they let me take a step back and see the bigger picture; they are what make education “Jesuit” to me.