My name is Claire Murphy, and I'm about to begin my fourth year in the PhD program in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame. I was enrolled in MODG for seven years, from sixth through twelfth grade, and I think those years were a crucial part of the formation--both as a thinker and as a person--that led me to where I am today.

When I began my studies with MODG in sixth grade, after previously attending a private Catholic school, I was struck by the way that the curriculum saw education as just one facet of an integrated human life. While my studies with MODG were certainly intellectually challenging and academically rigorous, they were no longer ordered toward concrete, quantitative academic achievements, as I'd felt to be the case at my brick-and-mortar school. Instead, the goal was for me to develop habits of mind, as well as experience with important texts and ideas, that would make me a lifelong learner and a well-rounded human person, spiritually as well as intellectually. That meant, for example, that I was no longer stressed and overloaded with homework, because that would have been detrimental to my flourishing as a person and as a learner! Instead, I was able to balance my studies with extracurricular activities (soccer, musical theater, and orchestra), and I was also blessed to spend quality time with, and even occasionally help teach, my four younger siblings, all of whom are current or former MODG students as well.

One part of my MODG education that proved to be particularly formative for me was the Natural Science course, which I took in tenth grade. My parents can attest that I was reluctant to keep a nature notebook, per the Natural Science syllabus, because that required me to observe and draw three natural things from my environment every week--and I thought I was terrible at drawing! But they insisted that I stick with it, and, though I didn't know it at the time, keeping that notebook was an early step in cultivating an attitude toward the natural world that has shaped the rest of my intellectual life. I later came to see that if we humans want to make any headway in knowing the truth about reality, the cosmos, and the God who created it, we need to begin that inquiry by patiently and thoughtfully attending to the ever-changing world around us: for our sensory experience of that natural world is what's most immediately known to us in this earthly life.

Of course, I didn't know all that in tenth grade, as I begrudgingly sketched insects in my notebook. But after high school I attended Thomas Aquinas College, where the texts I read in my Philosophy and Natural Science classes helped me to articulate more precisely why the habits of reflection and observation that my nature notebook had instilled were so important. By the end of my junior year, I realized that I wanted to keep reading and discussing great texts for the rest of my life, so I decided to apply for graduate school, with the hope of eventually teaching at a college someday. I'd developed a particular love for a study of the natural world that reaches both upward to its first principles and downward to our concrete experience, so the History and Philosophy of Science program at Notre Dame was a natural fit. I'm currently writing the proposal for my dissertation, which grapples with philosophical questions about how scientific models represent phenomena in the world and the way that those models help us learn by engaging our imagination. I'm also preparing to teach an undergraduate course of my own for the first time this fall, where I hope to help my students think through similar questions about the ways we come to know the natural world. 

I mentioned above that my studies with MODG cultivated a lifelong love of learning: that's particularly obvious, in my case, as I'm pursuing a career in education! But I truly think that this love of learning is a crucial part of human formation, no matter what particular path one takes in life. To wonder at and delight in the persons and the things one encounters in one's life, and to seek after ever deeper knowledge of those things and the God who made them, is in some sense a universal human vocation. I'm grateful to have been taught this so early on in life, and I hope to share this wonder with those I teach as well.

*All photos provided by Claire Murphy*

We want to thank Claire Murphy for taking the time to share a part of her story with us! Please know you are in our prayers as you pursue your life's passion!