If there is one thing I know for sure, it is that I would not be even half the person I am today without catholic school. My parents blessed me with the opportunity to be surrounded by nothing but faith and happiness for the first 14 years of my schooling and I can not thank them enough for being able to do that. The reason I loved my schools, grade school and high school, is not because I am a church-goin', every Sunday Catholic, but because of the values it taught me. I love God and my faith will always be something that is important in my life but the best part about it was every other thing that I was taught along the way.

My grade school's motto was "Nec Plus Nec Minus" which means "neither more nor less" and we would always add "than your very best". And this is something that is tattooed in my mind, a constant reminder of the standards we were held to. We were taught to give it everything we had no matter what, but never to flaunt any aspect of what we did. It kept us humble, grounded. I learned from this place that being a child of God meant that our purpose here was special, every day is worth shaping our own type of joy from it.

When I was little, I would always complain about the itchy tights and visually unpleasant skirts, but I never valued them until I had to get up for class at college every day and realize I had to figure out what to wear. I remember my first day of college and wondering what everyone else was gonna wear. I thought about if they would laugh at me if I was too dressed up, or look at me with disdain if I was too dressed down. I never appreciated that a uniform was more than a uniform. It kept us humble for the most difficult growing periods in our life. And I'm truly thankful that for 14 years I didn't have to worry about being judged in that sense because everyone else was in the same boat. An outsider might say, "What about individuality?" I would respond by saying that it doesn't matter what you're wearing, your personality does not change. Choose your words with grace, express your opinion, show your humor, and you won't need a sparkly jacket to stand out. I learned that through my catholic education and its one of the greatest lessons it ever taught me.

I'm thankful for the safety that surrounded me as I grew up. There was never a cop at the front of the school with a metal detector, most of us got dropped off by our parents, without the shock of a cold hard school bus every morning. We lived a little in the past for a while, and frankly with everything that is happening in today's world, I miss that slowed down simplicity. I miss monthly mass and singing every word of Hallelujah with the people I had been with since we were 3. I miss our moms standing there serving us the homemade tacos they just made in the cafeteria. I miss the Oblate sisters asking me how my family was doing every day when I walked into school. I miss seeing my big brother and his friends playing football on the playground and admiring how cool they were and how much I just wanted to grow up. But now, I just want to be back in that place. I want to be back with the people that watched me go through every phase in the book. The comfort of my hometown and the people inside of it encapsulated in a building full of history and faith, that taught me how to be the best and most decent human being I could be. I believe in Catholic school because I believe in the values that it taught me, the lifelong friendships it has created, and the everlasting presence of Christ that it installed in my heart.