Alumnae Interview

I did an interview with an alumnae for my religion class. Her name is Norma. Her graduating class is 1955. She has a lot of memories from Notre Dame. One of them was having the nuns check for appropriate skirt lengths and they are still doing that now, except they're teachers not nuns. When I told Norma that there were no nuns as teachers anymore, she was surprised. She said when she was in school there was only one lay, that's what they called a teacher who isn't a nun. She told me stories on how the teachers would check for any makeup, nail polish, and even if the student is being appropriate/good. They would stand in the hallways to make sure you're being good and by Norma's words there was 5 cents for nail polish remover and 2 cents for lipstick. Because of Notre Dame she made great connections with the community, she got involved, and she was set for the future from the education Notre Dame offered. The stories she told me from her friend group being called "The 3 Musketeers," to her traveling the world and living in different countries to her telling me how Notre Dame helped her finding her job and making her more aware of the other religions in the world was quite fascinating. She still keeps in touch with some of her friends from high school. She was very involved in high school, she was her senior class' Athletic Directer and she loves aquacades, the arts, and sports And that's one of the things she misses from Notre Dame; the proper education, the arts, and the girls. I asked her if there's anything that's different between "my" high school time and her's and she said the technology. Kids are always on their laptops or phones or really anything with a screen. She told me that she used to have Sunday family dinner night and now that's not as common as it was back then. We're even losing our social skills. She went to a conference one time and there were these 20 year olds that were having a conversation, but they were only talking about what was on their screen. "They can't talk about anything but the stuff on their screen." Norma said. She makes a good point our whole lives revolve around screens. It's hard for our generation, because everything were doing involves technology. Even writing this blog post involves technology. Norma simply said that we can change that, or at least reduce the screen time, by going out and exercising. When she was in high school she had a friend who went to a different school and she could tell there were distinct differences. At her friend's high school the students wouldn't respect their teachers, there was a lack of attention, and students at Notre Dame had a higher GPA. Norma was thankful for Notre Dame for a lot of reasons. One of the lessons she was taught was that you can overcome any obstacle in your life.