Looking back on my years at Saint Ambrose while writing this reflection reminded me how powerful a place and community can be in shaping who we become. When I first left that small school, I thought I was racing toward something bigger and better. Revisiting these memories now, as a college student immersed in a new campus community, has made me more aware of how much I value connection, routine, and environments where people genuinely know one another.
In many ways, Saint Ambrose prepared me for the literary community I’m involved in here at Cornell. I’m drawn to events where people share stories, whether through readings, workshops, or conversations, because that sense of shared experience feels familiar. The All Pro Dads breakfasts or the eighth-grade graduation activities weren’t “literary events,” but they taught me what it feels like to be part of something thoughtful, intentional, and communal. That same feeling is what I look for now when I go to author talks, student readings, or writing-focused events on campus.
Working on this blog post also pushed me to think about how nostalgia shows up in writing. I didn’t expect to feel emotional while revisiting the place I once couldn’t wait to leave, but writing helped me see how stories change as we do. What annoyed me then: the uniforms, the smallness, the repetition, is now something I appreciate. Memory isn’t fixed; it shifts as you grow, and writing is a way to track that shift.
Going forward, I want to pay more attention to events and gatherings that help me feel grounded on campus the way Saint Ambrose once did. I’m planning to attend more readings this
semester, especially those featuring student writers. I’d also love to explore local literary spaces, maybe the St. Paul libraries or small bookshops, to find new communities to be part of. Writing this reflection reminded me how much I value places that feel like home, and how meaningful it is to share those places, and those stories, with others.
A Place That Still Feels Like Home
When I was a little girl I went to a small Catholic School, Saint Ambrose, from kindergarten through eighth grade. Each year the entirety of my grade consisted of around eighty people at most. Throughout my years at Saint Ambrose, it kept feeling smaller and smaller; I was so ready to leave by the time eighth grade rolled around. I dreamed about the day that I would “graduate” from this small school and finally go to the local high school. East Ridge High School was much larger than Saint Ambrose. East Ridge had around four hundred people per grade, making it exponentially larger than the school I had been in for the entirety of my life.
When I attended Saint Ambrose I resented the smallness of it and the fact that I would know everybody. I hated walking around and not being able to meet anyone new.
I also strongly disliked the fact that we were required to wear uniforms. The girls’ uniforms were just awful: they consisted of an itchy almost see-through white button-up shirt as well as a green and blue plaid skirt. The skirt length always had to be below our fingers when our hands lay at our sides. Only a couple of days a year did we get “out-of-uniform days,” and these days always had some sort of rule that defined what you could and could not wear. Oftentimes there was a certain color we had to wear or a theme that we had to follow: I detested the strict parameters that were given on out-of-uniform days. So, to me, it never really felt like it was an out-of-uniform day.
Saint Ambrose had a unique tradition where students and their dads would show up to an event on the last Friday of every month called, All Pro Dads. Students would come with their fathers and eat a premade breakfast before school. There was a man who always ran it and he always provided topics of conversation that the fathers and their children could talk about. I remember how much I enjoyed doing this with my dad because he was usually so busy. However, he always made time to take me and my sister to All Pro Dads at the end of each month before he had to go to work. I recalled this event with my dad just a few weeks ago and we looked back on it fondly. He and I reminisced about when we first went to All Pro Dads. I was only in kindergarten then and the event only attracted about fifty people at most. As I grew older the event got bigger each year. More and more people started coming, and eventually, when we left at the end of my eighth-grade year, there were around one hundred and fifty people who
consistently showed up.
I still remember the day I graduated from eighth grade and how the faculty and staff tried to make the day special for everyone. They held a breakfast with all the parents and the students who were graduating. The students showed up in either a nice dress or a button-up shirt making the occasion special. The principal spoke about every student because she had known almost all
of us for a long time. There was a beautiful mass held for everyone, and the staff made the whole event memorable. After the official graduation, there was a small party for the students. The school rented a few arcade games and a photo booth. Everyone ran around and had a good time spending their last night with each other. Many people just sat in a circle talking with each other. I think that was a great way to say goodbye to the people that I had spent a large majority of my life with.
I think back on small things like this that Saint Ambrose provided and now remember it with only happy and fond memories. I am no longer annoyed by all the small things that I used to resent. I think part of what changed my perspective was the change of going from such a small school where I knew everybody in the community, to a large high school where I hardly knew anybody. Saint Ambrose did such a great job at connecting people and creating a welcoming environment. I am still in contact with some of my friends from my time there and every once in a while, we will still get together to catch up. I still feel a strong connection to Saint Ambrose because it is where I spent a lot of my childhood. I have fond memories of running on the playground, walking through the halls with my friends, and going to a special before-school breakfast with my dad. I knew that all of the teachers and faculty knew who I was and cared about me as a person. I am still in contact with some of my teachers from Saint Ambrose and some of them came to my high school graduation party. Even though I hated much about that school when I was there, I look back now and appreciate the things I despised. There was something simple about getting up every morning and putting on the same outfit and seeing the same people.
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