I was chatting with Mike, an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in four years, when our conversation naturally turned to graduation and our college journeys in general. Let’s just say we were chewing the fat, cut-throat style.

Actually, it was standard and pretty boring. But then he asked about the Jesuit influence on my experience.

Of course, the first thing I thought about was having two spring breaks thanks to Easter, but I knew I shouldn’t whittle it down to that. So I delayed for a bit by talking about how I don’t have too much contact with them other than the few Jesuits I had had as professors.

After stalling by talking about how some people can feel social anxiety around them and how we have a campus brand of coffee called Jesuit Joe, I finally figured out my answer.

I said, “Mike, it boils down to this: If it weren’t for the Jesuit influence on the ideals at Marquette, I probably wouldn’t have picked up a hitchhiker last week.”

Let’s get two things straight: This happened over break, and it wasn’t a hitchhiker by definition.

Having been in downtown Chicago that day, I endured quite a bit of soliciting, especially from Greenpeace. On a side-note, if the guy who treated me as if my cell phone was powered by Cadillac Escalades is reading this, I’m pretty sure I vanquished you when I said you killed a tree for that sheet of paper on your clipboard. He was aghast, but seriously, those sidewalk pitchmen need to stop assuming we’re all the worst offenders to their organizations.

Anyway, back to the story that makes me look good.

So I make it back to the parking lot, and before I fire up my car (named Sonya by the way) I receive a knock on my window. I’m thinking it’s another solicitor.

To my surprise it’s a distressed girl asking me if I have booster cables. After a reluctant pause I say “yes” because I can’t lie.

I set everything up since she’s not familiar with jumping a car battery, and I of course know exactly what I’m doing. Unfortunately, the terminals on her battery are so corroded that even after scraping the Wisconsin Badger out of them, the most we can do is get her lights to come on after 15 minutes.

We make casual conversation and I learn her name, to which I give the mental moniker, “The Hurricane.” I later learn she attends Northwestern, and that’s when the Marquette inside of me came out.

“Well, where are you headed anyway?” I ask.

And that was it. I ended up driving her to Kenosha on my way back to campus, and her father, who works in Chicago, dealt with the car later.
Here’s why I attribute this to Marquette:

Had I already known where this girl was going, I like to think I would’ve done the same thing out of sheer generosity. That’s not the point. The reality is there’s a good chance the idea to ask where she was headed would never have entered my mind if it weren’t for the influence of Marquette ideals.

If they’ve slipped your mind, the four pillars are Excellence, Faith, Service and Leadership. Again, if they’ve slipped your mind don’t worry because you can’t escape them. Nobody actively pursues them on a daily basis, but they find ways to sneak into our lives.

About 20 minutes into the drive, she expressed a wish that the world worked like this for her regularly and that it’s a shame a few maniacs out there ruin it for everyone.

The Hurricane was right, and now the motto “be the difference” came full circle for me. It’s all about being the exception, not the rule.
I wish I had the wherewithal to quote the part of the mission statement that says, “All this we pursue for the greater glory of God and the common benefit of the human community.”

Sadly I don’t have it memorized, so all I said in response was, “Yeah, this is weird.”