By Milagros O’Reilly (’16)

Note: The following essay is adapted from comments made before the Thomas Aquinas College Board of Governors at its November 2015 retreat.

What brought me to Thomas Aquinas College — some 6,000 miles from my home in Buenos Aires, Argentina — were two of my high school teachers, who were probably two of my favorite people in the world. Both were graduates of the College.

Throughout high school, every time there was a study break, I would go outside and I would sit with them and just talk about everything. When I considered what I wanted to do after graduation, I thought, “I want to become like those two people.” I wanted to develop my faith the way they had developed theirs, and I wanted to keep it the way I could see they were keeping it in their souls. So I figured this was the place to come.

Four years later, I can better understand what made these mentors the sort of people I wanted to be like — and what made my friendship with them so meaningful.

Everything that we learn at the College is important in its own way, but I think I can speak for all students in saying that we all have our own personal favorite book, passage, or quotation from the curriculum, something that changed our lives. That is how it was for me. It was a passage from the Ethics that I read during Junior Year. In it, Aristotle says, “For we are conducting an examination, not so that we may know what virtue is, but so that we may become good, otherwise there would be no benefit from it.”

We had been reading the Ethics for a couple of weeks, and that statement struck me as the truest I had read yet. It is true in regards to Aristotle’s concern, which was to explain what virtue is, but it is also true of knowledge in general. Wanting to learn, purely for the sake of acquiring more knowledge, is fine; it is a desire that God puts into our hearts to let us come to know Him. But learning is not good unless it makes you better. There is no point in having the confidence to repeat something out loud, to know, for instance, that virtue is the mean between two extremes, if you are not actually working to become more virtuous.

That quotation from the Ethics came at just the right time. I was having doubts about whether I wanted to still be here, if I wanted to continue with the hard work of the academic program. I was terribly homesick. I wanted very much to be at home with my family, and I wasn’t. But in reading that quotation, it became clear to me: Pursuing my education, with all the sacrifices it requires, is worthwhile if it is making me a better person. And it is.

It took nearly four years, but by working my way through the curriculum, I came to learn why I am here, what is the purpose of what I am learning.

Over that time, I have also learned about the true meaning of friendship. Friendships are stronger when friends are united in what they most want; when they walk together in the same direction. Here, what unites all the students — and is the basis of so many strong friendships — is that we share the desire to become better.

Before coming to the College, most of my friends were peers who were like me. Here, my friends are like what I want to be like. They are not merely the high school friends you choose just because they are the most fun to hang out with, or because they happen to be in your class. They are friends because we are walking together toward the same goals. We study the same curriculum. We are discerning our vocations. We are working to develop a strong spiritual life. We are all seeking the same things. We are all striving to become better.

Thank you for your work on the Board of Governors, which makes it possible for us to be here, pursuing this education and forging these friendships. The blessings of Thomas Aquinas College were communicated to me by two graduates who were my high school teachers, and that changed me. My hope is that, after I graduate, I will be like them, and that I will be able to communicate these blessings further.

Miss O’Reilly is from Buenos Aires, Argentina.