My Zag Journey

As my first class after being away from the classroom for almost exactly 20 years, I began my coursework with a high level of fear and self-doubt. Would I be able to read, think, and discuss ideas and topics at the level expected? Would I be able to successfully balance my job, schoolwork, home-life, and role as caretaker for my aging mother without letting any balls drop? Would I find people with whom I could develop meaningful relationships with and start building a professional network of resources and support? Did I truly have anything to offer considering I had been away from the white-color professional world for nearly ten years? Read More...

I took an ethics course as an undergraduate, and again as a graduate student twenty years ago. I remember loving them both, as I take deep enjoyment in the analysis of myself and others. As Gonzaga has taken a leading role in the Countering Hate movement, I was especially excited to dive into Hoover’s text. During this course my husband Chris and I had a small vacation planned to celebrate my January birthday at one of our favorite places, the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I have an incredibly clear memory of sitting at the desk in our cottage, headphones on, cup of coffee in hand, watching the Go Back to Where you Came From videos and vacillating between horrified and furious. Read More...

I chose to apply to Gonzaga in large part because of the Servant-Leader concentration, so I enrolled in this course my first semester to learn more about it and to determine if my initial instincts were correct. I was lucky enough to take this class with Dr. Spears, who truly lives what he teaches. I was encouraged and challenged every step of the way. During this class I started to find myself identifying servant-leadership in places I did not expect to which allowed my husband and I to have some real conversations about what servant-leadership is, and why I had chosen this school and this concentration. Read More...

This course honestly felt a little like two courses in one. There was the course in which we dove into Scharmer’s Theory U Process, the cycles and trends which effect organizations, and the distinctions between prediction and foresight. Then there was the class that happened during the immersion. Before flying to Spokane, I printed out and read through my packet – social presencing? System sculpting? What anti-introvert craziness was this? Read More...

This was the first class in my program with an immersion component, and I deliberately delayed taking it hoping for an in-person opportunity. Unfortunately, CoVID had other plans, and Gonzaga decided to do one more semester of virtual immersions. I was extremely doubtful that three days of Zoom meetings would provide the promised orientation to the Gonzaga experience, or truly allow us to meet the course objective of “engage[ment] with peers, staff, faculty advisors, and other resources to establish relationships that support their success throughout the program and beyond graduation.” Luckily, I was wrong. Read More...

This is the class the ORGL students whisper about and fear. I had originally planned to take the course in the late Fall of 2022, but after a few students who were ahead of me in the program told me how much work it was and how much time it required I decided that taking it during the holiday season (which is my busiest time at work) was not the best plan. I adjusted my course map and enrolled during the summer instead. Looking back this may have been the smartest decision I made during my whole program.

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Just thinking about this class brings me a sense of peace. Which is a far cry from how I was feeling during our first gathering at the Abbey. My relationship with religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, has been…complicated. My experience at the Abbey is, in many ways, inexplicable, because the self-awareness, growth, and increased content knowledge are all tangled together. I remember telling my husband in our first dinner out after the retreat that everything felt so loud. I was so much more content to listen and observe. It’s a feeling and a state of being I am actively working to hold on to. Read More...

This course was not a course focused on subject matter literature and expertise. Like much of the ORGL program has proven to be, this course was about developing ourselves so that we can better serve others. There have been times in my life when I have thought of myself as a potential professional writer – in college I was an active contributor of poetry and the occasional story to our literary journal – but despite sitting down multiple times over the years to attempt to actually write a short story or book, everything always sounded forced. This course helped me realize that I am in my own way because deep down I was trying to be entertaining, not authentic. Read More...