Prepping for Comprehensive Exams

Our first week here, we were invited out to the Tom and Liz Borgers' home for our annual dinner gathering. The Borger family, along with Liz's mother Mary Naquin, are sponsoring our program. They are wonderful people, and their family's hospitality is something I want to emulate. We had a lovely dinner and a great time visiting with everyone. The president of Catholic Extension, Fr. Jack Wall, joined the gathering as well. Below are a few pictures of the first three cohorts participating in the Catholic Extension Young Adult Initiative and studying at Notre Dame (shown with some of our friends and donors at Catholic Extension):

Front row, from left to right: Jessy, Marissa, Casey, Kathy, and Fr. Jack.
Middle row: Mary Rebecca, Me, Julie, Molly
Back row: Katie, Maria, Christine

Our group pictured this time with two of our generous donors, Tom and Liz Borger.

 Featured here is our sweet donor, Mary Naquin.

Meanwhile, back at campus... The preparation continues. It's hard not to view comps as a looming, scary giant that's just far enough AND near enough in the future to make me anxious for both reasons. At any rate, the studying is coming along!

Our written exam takes place this Monday, July 21, from 8:00 a.m. to noon. For this portion, we will be given five questions and asked to write approximately 4 pages (1000 words) on three of them. No notes, no resources (other than basically a Bible and the documents of Vatican II). 

I recently found out that my oral exam will be on Wednesday, July 23, at 2:30 p.m. This portion lasts for 40 minutes. During this time, I will be answering questions posed by members of my comprehensive exam board. My board consists of Dr. Katie Cavadini, Fr. Brian Daley, and Professor Larry Cunningham. When I found this out, I was both thrilled and terrified at the same time. Let me tell you a little about each of these people to illustrate why...

Katie Cavadini is the Chair of our MA program. She's fantastic, and she's the daughter of John Cavadini, who has been one of my favorite professors in the program. He's a legend around here.

Fr. Brian Daley is a world-renowned scholar. He was awarded the Ratzinger Prize in theology a couple years ago by the Pope (which is like the Nobel Prize of theology). He basically wrote the book on two of my exam topics (no pressure there). Also, he used to (and might still) help coach the boxing team here at ND. 

Professor Larry Cunningham is another legend here at ND. He also literally wrote one of the books in my topic's bibliography. He recently wrote a book about all of the chapels here on campus.

So my board is comprised of wonderful and brilliant people. My main goal at this point is to not sound like an idiot. Back to studying so I can achieve that goal!