Accreditation & Gratitude

Yesterday W.C.C. reached full accreditation status with the Higher Learning Commission, a laborious and seemingly endless task for the school I have been with for nearly four months now. 

Accreditation gives Wyoming Catholic more credence and legitimacy in the eyes of employers and others looking at graduates' diplomas and resumes and is a huge victory and step forward. Many, many thanks to our faculty, staff, and benefactors who have supported us to this point.

Thank you!

In gratitude for this announcement, and using a letter draft I wrote for our "Gratitude Day" earlier this month (writing letters to our school's benefactors) here is my thanksgiving, why I-we are grateful for this school and to be here.

“I have you,” my friend Cyril shouted. “I’m right behind you. If you fall, I fall with you!” The wind whistled as rocks slid away from every footfall, slipping down the briefest of slopes before plummeting far away down the cliff just to my left. I stepped forward. Once, twice, more rocks moved. I slipped, I caught my balance, and moved onwards.  This was the most frightening day of our twenty-one day Freshman Expedition,  a moment that I used to begin by first essay, but at the same time the most terrifying of my eighteen years of life. We, the eight of us were lost, lost both physically and with persistent difficulties in getting along with each other over the past three weeks we had been alone in the wilderness. Terrified probably the most of anybody, it was my roommate Cyril who pulled me through this day where we were lost in the seemingly endless drainages of the Wyoming Teton Wilderness smoothed over and brought us eight men  together in treue unity and Christian charity.

Since that day where we experienced the terrifying aspect of grandeur, we, I, have for more than two months months immersed ourselves in the equally deep and penetrating truths in the classroom. Working together, living together, praying together, we are, however imperfect, a Catholic community that is spreading the Catholic and Western traditions while we learn and reintegrate ourselves into the continuity of Cultural tradition. Since coming to visit last year I longed to be truly part of the community that I had glimpsed and even while considering other colleges, this, this place in “God’s country”, the wilderness of Wyoming and a center of cultural reawakening, continually drew me back. Voluimus Habere Veritas! We wish for the truth!

"Jackfruit Medical Scenario"

Here I truly love this experience, this moment in my life where I can unite myself with history, with the saints, heroes, and stories of the past, where I can wander lost in the wilderness like the explorers of old, discover the “wide expanse” of Homer and compare it to the literature of the Bible that expresses the true theological truths we see everyday at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We can write in imitation of Aquinas, learn Latin as little children (sicut parvuli), study nature in the field like the original scientists of history, and serve coffee to the governor on the weekends (with our associated catering business), while walking in community and singing the “good old songs”.

Thanks, thanks to thee my worthy friend for the lesson thou hast told…” (Stevenson)

Thank you for the lesson, the life-lesson, the soul-lesson, we have and are learning, are living.

Thank you for the support you have given to this grand endeavor for the pursuit of truth and wisdom.

Thank you for supporting Wyoming Catholic College and enabling me and one-hundred-and eighty others like me to have this experience,

Gratias vobis ago,

Hic locus est pulcher,

I.V.