Meet the Summer Program Prefects: Monica Weinkopf (’25)

We continue to meet the prefects for the California High School Program! Today’s featured prefect is rising sophomore Monica Weinkopf.

Monica is from Santa Paula, just six miles from Thomas Aquinas College’s California campus. In a world where quality Catholic education is by no means a given, Monica remarks, “it’s wild to me that God would put me and the College in the same town!”

But while proximity has its blessings, it also has its drawbacks. Moving at all times within the TAC orbit can induce a numbing familiarity with those aspects of TAC which make the College unique in the eyes of an “outsider.” Monica was well aware of that potential foreshortening of perspective, and was determined not to succumb. Hence even though she was drawn to its solid Catholic education, she explains, “I didn’t want familiarity to be the reason that I went to TAC. I also wondered if I was really cut out for four years of math and science.”

All that being said, of course, Monica greatly enjoyed growing up on the peripheries of Thomas Aquinas College. She was especially attracted to the Summer Program. “Every summer in middle and high school,” she tells us, “I would check the TAC website daily for updates on the program!” With time, and especially as her questions about TAC developed and she began to wonder if perhaps God really was calling her to TAC, the Summer Program looked like more than just two fun weeks of summer. It could shed decisive light on the decision she would soon have to make about college.

Monica at last attended the Summer Program for herself in 2020. “It was a minor miracle,” she laughs, “because it was the year of cancelations everywhere!” Those cancelations cast their pall on the usual trips to Santa Barbara and the beach, as well as the final dance. Yet Monica did not leave resentful of what she didn’t get to experience, but grateful for what she did. “I realized on my program that, although you’re tucked away into the mountains and into small discussions, you discover in a new way that life is so much bigger than yourself,” she reflects. “You are reminded that God and truth and friendship are all intensely possible.”

In the end, therefore, Monica’s time at the Summer Program provided just the clarification she needed. “Having the classes and community become my own for two weeks was something that no one else’s description, or even campus visits, could give me,” she says. “I came to realize how much I had taken for granted about the College: the integrated classes, the curriculum, the seminar style, the education’s order to contemplation of the Trinity … God seemed to have made me for this place — it just took me a while to notice it!”

Suffused with the peace that comes from a decision guided by grace, Monica returned to the College as a freshman last fall, and she is honored to be working as a prefect for the 2022 Summer Program. “I would encourage everyone to stop by the Chapel throughout the day, stay with the ideas that the readings raise, and be open to conversation with everyone. And of course,” she adds with a smile, “have so much fun!” With Monica onboard, that won’t be hard.