First Blog - week of 8/29/14

I am currently in the last semester of my 5th year here at Loyola university. With only a few major requirements left, I have been left with several open spots to take whatever I wanted. It feels like I've been here a long time now, but despite this being a catholic college I have never truly felt a religious presence (or perhaps it is more accurate to say that I just never let it influence me) This is a little surprising because I was born and raised catholic here in New Orleans. I have gone to catholic institutions my entire life including Jesuit High school here in New Orleans. With that being said, I never would have guessed to enroll in a religious course with one of my free slots in the last semester of undergraduate career, but I was intrigued when I saw an Ignatius Loyola course taught by a Jesuit being offered on lora. It made me think that perhaps I did want to get something out of this Jesuit institution that I couldn't have otherwise gotten at any other school. Perhaps I wanted to finish my academic journey in the same way I started it as an freshman at Jesuit High school. And during all this time, I never truly had a serious understanding of who this man was who has had so much influence on my life since the age of 13. So I am taking this course because it seems like the best way to cap off a 10 yearlong stay in the Jesuit education system. I am a philosophy major by the way, currently planning on enrolling into law school. I'm taking the LSAT in a few weeks in September and I have been nervous about it for quite sometime. So I guess that is one of the biggest questions in my life at this current time. Will I do well enough to go to the school of my choice? Even if I do well, are the student loans that I will surely have to take out ever be worth the degree I'll get? What kind of Lawyer will I even be, or more importantly what kind of person will I be? I have no Idea how to even begin to answer any of those questions right now, and I'm sure that even as I find answers, new even bigger questions will come to take their place. Ignatius did live in an interesting time. It seems to me that he lived on the cusp of a new type of world. The medieval world of chivalry and knights was slowly dying by the time he became a man. I believe that there has been a similar type of change in my lifetime with the instant global connectivity of the internet. The internet has changed how everyone lives. Everyone is connected, their joys as well as their sorrows. In many ways this has allowed us to be affected by conflicts big and small both in this country and on the other side of the world.