«The College allows us to carry out meaningful work and thus,
to be able to strengthen our identity. It is the possibility of offering something of ourselves to the world.«
We know that the beginning of school is usually a time that challenges us from different places, mainly from our emotional sphere.
We are faced with the need to establish new times and rhythms, we must organize the day and the beginning of activities. We need to fulfill our tasks at home and at work. This leads us to feel that there is not enough time for everything we need to cover.
It is a return to routine, usually long and demanding, which usually gives us the indication that the year has really begun. It is normal to feel more pressured at this time.
For this reason, it is important for us to remember the other things that also begin with the start of the school year, taking into account the purpose of this.
We do not only attend school to receive academic training - which we consider to be an important aspect - but it is also an opportunity to build meaning, personal growth, humanism, in short, to develop our existence.
School allows us to carry out meaningful activities and thus strengthen our identity. It is the opportunity to offer something of ourselves to the world.
Educational institutions invite us to develop transcendent actions, because they allow us to display values such as commitment, love and solidarity, among others. Actions that collaborate to make the world better than it was before they were carried out.
Doing - an activity so present in education - is a means by which we manifest love, it allows us to give ourselves to others, to the world.
We are who we are through the work we do every day, therefore the educational field is also a space for existential development, because it is a way we have of learning to respond to the challenge that is life.
It gives us the opportunity to know ourselves and discover our capabilities and limitations, and thus, to be able to exercise our freedom responsibly.
Through our connections with others, I get to know myself and others, we transcend ourselves, we open ourselves to the world. We can build bonds of friendship, groups of belonging, work groups and share values, experiences and attitudes that are, ultimately, what allows us to develop our capacity to face the possible situations that arise on a daily basis.
By getting to know each other and getting to know the world, I discover what I want to do and in doing so, I build myself.
It seems appropriate to say goodbye with a fragment of the objective of the education of the Society of Jesus:
Young people should feel free to follow the path that allows them to grow and develop as human beings. Our world, however, tends to view the goal of education in overly utilitarian terms (…). Education, therefore, must become a carefully reasoned inquiry through which students form or reform their habitual attitudes toward others and toward the world (16-17).
Ps. Lucia Rodriguez
