It all began one fateful night in the McCormick Hall Council meeting room with a little Usher music. There’s something about “Yeah” that must be binding. Four years later we find ourselves, older, somewhat wiser and, above all, empowered. Next stop: White House?

Name: Kathleen Blaney
Age: 22
Major: Nursing
Minor: Political Science
Campus Activities: Peer Health Education, MUSG, Campus Ministry

My Journey
So my sophomore year, my roommate had this quote stuck on our bulletin board that said, “Do not be just a human doing, but a human being.” Honest to God, I saw that thing every night before I fell asleep and legitimately thought she must have copied it down wrong somehow, that she had gone to a lecture or read it in a book and gotten it confused in the transcription. Because why would you be a human being, when you can do, right? Well, my friends — or random individuals who are taking this rare intimate journey into my soul — it was not until one year later that it finally clicked. We are students. We attend class, we take exams, we stay up till the wee hours of the morning finishing papers, we complain about it the whole next day, etc. etc. etc. But we are so much more. We rock out to “Like A Prayer” in the sun-streamed common area at the Pallotti Center. We reflect, cross-legged and crammed in on the cold stone floors of the St. Joan of Arc Chapel. We bop our heads until our necks hurt to Fatboy Slim’s “Rockefeller Skank” at the old OP. We randomly burst into song. We monopolize the city of Milwaukee’s scotch tape and Jolly Rancher supply. We ingeniously figure out how to flick air bubbles out of IV lines. We sleep guiltlessly until the early hours of Sunday afternoon. We stretch across international borders, challenge social norms and develop as people, individuals in our own right. I cannot regret a single thing my college experience has taught me because it has all brought me to the point of my life where I am today: blissfully aware of my surroundings, challenged to stick out my neck, grateful for the people I encounter and cheesy to the point of fault.

The Roads I Took to Get There
Highway 43 south from Green Bay, Wisc., the four flights of stairs up which my parents helped me haul two years worth of stuff and a Christmas tree, the alley between my apartment and the AMU that my roommates and I prance through rain or shine, the hallway that leads to the Brew Bayou and the carpeted area in front of the MUSG office, the unpaved road that leads from Punta Gorda to Conejo, the manmade mudslide that is Schroeder field where, more often than not, I find my downfall when I’m running late to Health Ed, the 170-kilometer trek from Nairobi to Amboseli and the upcoming march to the Pomp & Circumstance commencement procession.

Continuing the Journey
“We were strangers, starting out on a journey…” I already forewarned you about the randomly bursting into song thing. I feel like this is the “what do you want to be when you grow up” version of the graduating-senior-months-away-from-the-real-world question. Truth be told, I don’t have the details figured out. I plan to volunteer, continue on to graduate school for global public health and see what happens from there. While I appreciate that Marquette has led me to a greater understanding of what I want to be, I feel that more importantly it has prepared be for who I want to be. And really, what more could you ask for?