As I neared the end of my time as a Teaching Fellow, I was reflecting on what might come next. I realized the aspects I enjoyed most about teaching and coaching was building rich, authentic relationships with students. In other words, my job as a rector is comprised of my favorite aspects of being a teacher, but amplified!

My work at Siegfried is similar to the classroom in that no two days are truly the same. As a teacher and a rector, you never really know what you're going to get, but the variety keeps things fun. I have a hard time believing one could ever find being a teacher or a rector boring! A big difference between the two is the degree to which I need to give my residents the space to make their own decisions. By the very nature of their age, college students are more "adult" than high school students, so the importance of allowing them to grow into that adulthood by honoring their agency and then helping them manage how they use that agency for good or bad is of paramount importance.

Witnessing the Ramblers break our previous record and clear $40,000 in donations for South Bend Center for the Homeless through our signature event, Day of Man, last February. To see the hall throw their support behind (and put their own bodies on the line, wearing minimal clothing in the dead of winter) a cause they won’t personally benefit from is a reminder of what and who this education is truly for: the service of others, to be given back, to be shared.

Teaching Fellows instilled in me a love of working with young people. I loved teaching, but my favorite parts of the job were often what happened outside the classroom: coaching, interacting with students after class, listening to them, going to their concerts and games. Being a rector is basically doing all the non-classroom stuff that I loved! And Teaching Fellows helped me find my vocation as a priest and religious in Holy Cross, which is why I'm a rector today.

They’re similar in that the core of the mission is to help students discover and understand who they are and what their vocation is. Ultimately, ACE teachers and rectors do their best to love their students well. The two are different because even though I talk with students about their classes, papers, and majors, that is mostly the work of the academy. I help cultivate the heart.

I was floored by how many Baumer guys came to my ordination in April. Walking into the Basilica and seeing so many of them was really special.

ACE's intentional community is reflective of the intentional communities that exist here at Notre Dame in the residence halls. Putting a bunch of people together who come from different backgrounds but are rooted in a common mission, whether that's to serve in Catholic schools or to pursue a unique education rooted in our Catholic faith, is so profound. I loved and was deeply formed by my community as an undergraduate in Lyons Hall at Notre Dame, in the Tucson ACE community, and now back at Notre Dame in Breen-Phillips.

I often joke that college students are a lot like middle schoolers. They're both at this odd transition point in their lives, trying to figure out who they are. They're overly confident and deeply unsure at the same time. A building of 162 girls is just a little bit less smelly than a classroom of middle schoolers. Being a rector is like being a teacher in that you get to celebrate with your students and walk with them through challenges, but you also get to "go home with them" and see them outside the classroom as their silliest, most authentic selves.

When I started as rector, BP didn't have much of a food culture around the weekday Mass. My assistant rector and I decided to bake cookies every week, something easy and low-stakes, and it has blossomed. Post-Mass cookies have become a gathering point for the hall, where girls will anxiously await the end of Mass to hang out in the lobby and grab a cookie. Or three. "Sarah's cookies" has become a cultural moment, complete with a custom plate, a hype video on the BP Instagram, and memes about giving them up for Lent. The girls know that even if I'm gone for the night for a retreat, there will be cookies because it is that important.

I found that a lot of the outside-of-class time, the in-between class time—being on the field, being on the court, those conversations before and after school—those are the things that I grew to love about being a teacher. Again, it's kind of witnessing and accompanying young people as they grow up, and that’s outside of the actual classroom curriculum, but it’s what I get to experience every day here as a rector.

Some of the stuff I liked less about being a teacher—the lesson planning, the grading—aren’t a part of my responsibilities now. But all the reasons that I stayed as a teacher for five years, I'm able to do as a rector. I'm grateful.

It might be this week, honestly. The move-in days and the excitement, with their hope and energy. These last few days, maybe the last 72 hours, have been some of my favorites. It's something I was looking forward to—this year, maybe particularly: greeting all the guys. It's been a quiet summer, but I was excited to get back and see all the guys who, now, in my third and fourth year, I know, and they know me. Just being able to greet them and high-five, fist bump, and hug them as they're coming in. We have 87 new freshmen and transfers as well.

I feel most alive working with those I am working for. Being on the ground floor to see the impact and make decisions while deeply enmeshed in community gives me lasting purpose.

Many lessons I learned as a teacher have directly applied to being a rector: Praise in public, critique in private. Scaffold criticism with precise encouragement. They will hear it in your voice until they hear it in their own. One key aspect of curriculum is learning how to get out of your own way. Appealing to attitudes and values makes more sense than appealing to policy. Nothing is more important than learning names, staying curious, and being interested in those you are caring for. But classroom culture changes year after year as there is a large reset with students. You are not afforded the same reset in a residence hall.

The ice chapel was special to me because others had the gift of seeing the Coyle community and how we are. The way the community came together to create a fun and meaningful experience was so typically us, yet so particular to those that made it. When others can see my community with the same awe and wonder that I do is something I don't take for granted.