letter to my senior-year self

This final exercise of the Moreau First-Year Seminar invites you to compose a letter that functions as a “time capsule” of your current formation and a roadmap for your future time at Notre Dame. We call this exercise the Letter to My Senior-Year Self.

The recipient of the letter is you, three years from now. Use 800 to 1000 words to address the following two prompts. If your “senior self” would not recognize your voice in this reflection, then you are being too vague. Such examination aligns with the seminar goal of promoting your holistic formation and with Bl. Basil Moreau’s injunction that “the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart.”

• Look Backward: Identify at least two ideas from across the course readings, refraction videos, co-curricular events, or life labs that have prompted you to think or act differently. Be specific in describing how these insights challenge you.
• Look Forward: Identify at least two practices that you intend to cultivate during your remaining years at Notre Dame. Explain how you hope those actions will allow you to affirm at graduation that you are both beloved and called to love.

By concluding in this way, we review the central dynamic of the seminar by considering how our lives are animated by love and oriented toward love.

More about the Letter To My Senior-Year Self can be found in the Moreau FYS commonplace book.