After reading the poems and Kolvenbach reading for today I am slightly confused by the poetry but very interested in the background of Jesuit education. While reading the Kolvenbach article I could not help but think back to our retreats we have had for volleyball with Father Brown. I feel like the reading related a lot to the different things we spoke about. A large thing that we hit on this year during our retreat was the idea of not just going to a Jesuit institution like Loyola, but knowing what it is like and what it means to be Loyola women and to represent what the school, and Jesuit education mean. Having the knowledge and background to stand up and support the differences of people and make that be something that pulls us together rather than drive us further apart. This had been stuff that we had all heard since we had been here at Loyola and at first we just saw this as another person telling us the same thing. That was until he gave us example of another team (not naming names) that was not like us and did not fully understand and take to heart the value of Jesuit education and creating a whole person. He said when he realized this about this other team, he stopped doing retreats with them because the point of doing the retreat is not to go through the motions and listen to a man talk about “things you think you’ve heard” but rather to understand what he is telling you, not just to further your education about Jesuit education and bring justice to a campus and a whole world of wrongs and injustices, but in the end to bring this small group of people closer together on an emotional and spiritual level in order to start a chain reaction to help and inspire others to do the same.

For some reason that was all I was relating back to while reading that article, possibly because that’s the biggest thing I have done so far to explore deeper into the idea of Jesuit education. Then thinking back to the poems, I had a connection to them as well. The Mending Wall talked about the differences in physical and emotional distance for people. This demonstrates the needed separation from people, even when it is not realized. However, toward the end, when his neighbor says, “Good fences make good neighbors,” (Frost) he is talking about how the distance and barrier is necessary, even if it does not serve a real purpose to keep anything out, it is symbolic of that space but at the same time togetherness. These two themes come together because the wall between them needs to periodically be fixed and repaired, so in that sense, when they come together to fix up the falling wall, it is a time to connect, but in the mean time, it does serve as that separation that is seemingly needed for people.

I see the Accident, Mass. Ave as a realization to everyone in the scenario. Everyone is so quick to jump to conclusions and get mad and frustrated about things, especially because this is just the norm most of the time. But when the poem and story continue, it is discovered that nothing really happened, no damage was done, and there was yelling for no reason. When the old woman starts crying, I see it as sort of relief because nothing bad came out of a seemingly bad situation and from all the feelings she had from being yelled at. Then in the end, they just laugh it off, which I feel is a very common way of people to deal with things.

Finally, in the last poem, I think it was just trying to stress the importance of education and learning to read because in the end when it says she learned to read, it then tells of how she got a house, therefore saying how education will make you successful. I think this ties in well to the service learning I will be doing at Tunbridge because, of course, it is a school so education is an important aspect there, but also for the making of an overall successful person, which is a big part of Jesuit education, the making of a whole person. While I am there I hope to help and assist in doing this. I want to be in the class room environment to make the children smile and feel that their days are not just boring, but they can be fun. I also want to help stress the importance of education and learning and why it will be so beneficial to them in their lifetime. Of course I will not go on about Jesuit education and the whole person to these children, but by making subtle changes, I hope to put those ideas into their minds for them to remember.