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Tradition

tradition lab

Tradition Co-curricular Lab | Imagining Graduation Conversation

“When you graduate this university, your diploma will be marked by the seal of Notre Dame. Upon it will be the words in Latin, vita, dulcedo, et spes: for life, sweetness, and hope. Those are the words of a prayer for Our Lady’s intercession. They are also Holy Cross’s goal for your journey here: that you might become the glorious person you are in God’s eyes and settle for nothing less.” 

- Fr. Kevin Grove, C.S.C. (2024)

One way to begin clarifying how we anticipate participating in Notre Dame’s vision of education is to identify your aspirations for the next few years. This co-curricular lab is an opportunity to join a peer in imagining your future graduation and comparing the ways you hope to have formed and been formed by a Notre Dame education.

Click here for a PDF version of the Imagining Graduation co-curricular lab

Guidelines

  1. Invite a fellow first-year student to join you in completing this co-curricular lab.
  2. Before sharing in conversation with your partner, imagine yourself graduating from Notre Dame
    and consider the following questions.
    • As a graduate, how do you hope to have been formed or changed by your time at Notre Dame? Consider the various realms of your experience, including your intellectual, social, and spiritual development, and the integration of the three. What changes will persist in life after Notre Dame?
    • What motivates you to hope for such change?
    • Recall Fr. Kevin Grove’s description of tradition as a “living thing - not simply repeating what has always been done.” How do you hope to have contributed to or helped shape Notre Dame’s vision of education? How do you hope Notre Dame has been changed by you?
    • How do these aspirations compare with the university’s hopes for you, as described by the texts you discussed in the Tradition seminar session?
  3. Meet with your conversation partner and discuss both of your responses to these questions in detail. Your conversation should last 40 minutes.
  4. In your commonplace book, beginning on page 232 (or later), summarize your experience, connect it to the text from the tradition session, and apply it to your practice of living well.