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The Gonzaga Experience

The Gonzaga Experience. This phrase is heard a lot on and off campus, but what exactly does it mean? A great education in the Ignatian tradition. Teaching men and women to serve others. Professors who illuminate and befriend. Service learning, the arts and athletics, clubs, residence life, studies in Florence - all of these components round out the Gonzaga Experience. But there's more.

You can't spend much time at Gonzaga without being struck by students' expressions of joy. Full-throated delight in discovering the riches of campus life. The exhilaration of tumbling into a friendship that enriches a year - or redirects a student's life.

Joy is not often debated in departmental meetings, nor is it listed in any syllabus. But we all know the happy delirium that touches the spring of our lives. It's a vital element of the Gonzaga Experience.

Please share your great Gonzaga experience with us and we will share it with the rest of Zag Nation right here on this Web page. Don't forget to send us a photo of yourself, either. Send your photo and story to Pete Tormey by clicking here. We'd love to hear from you.

Melissa C. Carstens, Class of 2002

I graduated from Gonzaga in 2002, and I can sum up my Gonzaga experience in one word: family. Now, true, a lot of Zags can say the same thing, but let me explain why this word is so appropriate for me. I transferred to Gonzaga halfway through my freshman year. Transferring to a new school is tough enough, but doing so mid-year, after people have already established their own group of friends, was really daunting. Several of my high school classmates attended Gonzaga, so I figured, "at least I’ll know someone," but I didn’t realize how welcoming the people I didn’t know would be.

My first night in CM, I went to the COG for dinner with almost half of the girls in my hall. Now, true, maybe this was just because it was the first night back from Christmas vacation, and they felt badly for the new girl, except that many of them kept making an effort to include me, even after the first week and first month had passed. My roommate was extremely, extremely shy, and all of the girls in my hall knew that, so they overcompensated for her, embracing me as part of their Gonzaga family. I remained friends with some of those girls over the years and just visited one last weekend.

Beyond my new family of friends, though, I associate Gonzaga with family because I see my great grandfather’s picture every time I walk through the first floor of the Administration Building. Dr. John O’Shea, my dad’s grandfather, graduated from Gonzaga in 1901, 101 years before I did. Looking at his picture, I know that I have this special tie to a man I never met. We’re family by blood, but also family by school.

Soon I will be officially extending my Gonzaga family by marrying a Zag. Daniel Wessman was a fellow English major and member of the class of 2002. We met our junior year in Dr. Bonin’s Shakespeare class, and in May 2008, Fr. Steve Kuder, a Gonzaga Jesuit, will perform our wedding on Gonzaga’s campus at St. Al’s.

During my college years Gonzaga was home, physically, but it will always be home because home is where the family is.