Alliance for Catholic Education
As an ACE Ambassador, you commit to ACE a full year before you ever step into a classroom as a Teaching Fellow. During that year, friends accept post-graduate jobs, professors ask about next steps, and those around you try—earnestly—to understand what you will be doing upon graduation. And yet, you have no concrete answers to give, and you are left in limbo.
During my senior year of college, I was happily tasked with recruiting for a program I had not yet experienced. I loved meeting with students interested in ACE, hosting campus events like Thank-a-Teacher Day, and leading information sessions. One question during a presentation, however, stopped me short. A fellow student raised his hand and asked, “So you’re trying to get us to do a program that you yourself haven’t even done yet—why?” He was right. I was speaking with confidence and enthusiasm about something I had not yet lived, and that question pulled me into a deeper “why.”
From the outside, the decision to do ACE—especially as an Ambassador—made little sense. I committed to two years of service that could place me almost anywhere in the country. I knew I would be teaching, but not whether my students would be eight or eighteen years old. I would live in community with three to five people I had never met. To many friends and professors, this uncertainty seemed reckless. But those who know ACE understand why this season of waiting was also a season of peace.
Before applying to be an ACE Ambassador, I spoke with countless ACE graduates. I consistently asked one question: What did you gain from your time in ACE? I hoped for tangible answers and measurable outcomes. Instead, I received responses that were both difficult to quantify and impossible to ignore. Graduates spoke passionately about growth in virtue: grit, courage, patience, humility, and empathy. Though their answers were often vague in specifics, they were remarkable in consistency. That consistency gave me confidence—not only to join ACE, but to invite others into it as well. Even in my impatience to know the details of my mission, I rested in the quiet assurance that I was exactly where I was meant to be.
Waiting is a core tenet of our faith. Scripture reminds us again and again that God does some of His greatest work in the waiting. Perhaps the clearest example is Holy Saturday—the long, silent day between the suffering of Good Friday and the joy of Easter Sunday. Holy Saturday is not comfortable. It is marked by uncertainty. And yet, we know it is not the end of the story. God is not absent in the waiting; He is preparing something miraculous. As disciples of hope, we are called not merely to endure waiting, but to wait well.
To wait well is to wait courageously. It means choosing trust when clarity is absent and faith when outcomes are unknown—it is when faith is truly required and tested. During my year as an ACE Ambassador, I tried to practice this kind of waiting. Each night, I prayed for my future school, students, and ACE community, long before I knew their names or could picture their faces. At the time, those prayers felt abstract. Now, when I look at my students and community each day, they feel deeply personal. God was forming my heart for people I had not yet met, preparing me to respond courageously when His call became clear.
As I near the end of my time as a Teaching Fellow, there is much I wish I could go back and tell my Ambassador self, though most of it I wouldn’t have been ready to hear. During that season of active waiting, I began laying the foundation for the virtues ACE would later cultivate. Learning to relinquish control was a gift before entering the classroom, and I am grateful for the head start I had in practicing it. Perhaps you find yourself in a season of waiting, too—whether as an ACE Ambassador awaiting placement or standing at the threshold of another life transition. Waiting is rarely easy, but it is never wasted. God is always at work, shaping us for the mission ahead. I offer you the same words of hope I would now offer my younger self: wait courageously and know that God’s call—when it comes—will be worth the wait.