(Photographs by Lee Pellegrini)
Friday, 5:00 p.m.听
On an afternoon in early spring, 33 students sat in silence on a yellow school bus taking them from Boston College to an 80-acre property in the woods of Dover, Massachusetts, 12 miles west of Gasson Tower. There, in a former family mansion turned Dominican Priory that is now Boston College鈥檚 Connors Family Retreat and Conference Center, they would spend a weekend participating in the 88th rendition of a retreat called Halftime. Started by the University in 2001, Halftime asks undergraduate students to set aside friends, textbooks, Netflix, and cellphones (most of the time) and focus鈥攆or 45 hours鈥攐n who they are and who they want to be.
鈥淗alftime isn鈥檛 an adrenaline rush. Halftime is a plate of broccoli,鈥� says Michael Sacco, director of the Center for Student Formation, the office within the Division of University Mission and Ministry that runs the retreat. 鈥淲hat Halftime offers,鈥� says Sacco, 鈥渋s a chance for students to slow down, to really pay attention to their talents and desires, and to break down the pressures they feel about the future.鈥� Today鈥檚 average 18-to-33-year-old American, according to research published in the science journal听PLOS One, checks his or her phone 85 times a day, an investment of approximately five hours. 鈥淭his generation wants and needs formally carved out time to disconnect and make meaning of their lives,鈥� says Sacco.
Brian Kusior 鈥�19 (in glasses) and Sofia Ribeiro 鈥�18, before a panel.
Halftime鈥檚 origins trace to 1999, when the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment offered to help liberal arts colleges and universities launch programs for students to 鈥渆xamine the relationship between their faith and vocational choices.鈥� A team of some 20 Boston College faculty and administrators, led by Joseph Appleyard, SJ, 鈥�53, Ph.L.鈥�58, H鈥�12, then vice president for the division of University Mission and Ministry (founded in 1998), drafted a proposal that would fund ministry internships; run monthly seminars to educate faculty and staff on the University鈥檚 Jesuit, Catholic mission; and host retreats at which faculty would speak to students about decisive moments in their own lives and so lead students to consider life decisions they had made and still needed to make. Lilly granted the University $2 million. The internships and seminars ended within a decade. Halftime, however, lives on. Originally intended for students during the summer between sophomore and junior year鈥攈ence Halftime鈥攖he retreat now takes place at least twice each semester and is open to all undergraduates. More than 700 faculty and staff have participated to date, along with some 4,000 students.
The students on the bus looked out the windows, earbuds in place, perhaps enduring what Student Formation staff鈥攎any not a great deal older than the students鈥攃all FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) on a weekend鈥檚 worth of campus life. Two registered students never made it to the bus or responded to queries from retreat staff. As frequently happens with overbooked students, a few others had cancelled, to instead attend a popular annual dance competition.
Of those on the bus, nearly half had already participated in one or more of the dozen other Mission and Ministry programs on the Boston College retreat circuit鈥攊ncluding 48 Hours (to help freshmen make the transition to college) and Kairos (an exploration of Christian faith). Some had what Sacco calls the 鈥渞etreat bug.鈥� Others told me they hoped Halftime might help them choose a major, or decide on a career. Few students in the schools of management or nursing attend Halftime. 鈥淲e mostly attract humanities majors, students who don鈥檛 have clearly scripted paths ahead of them, and want to find a path,鈥� says Sacco.
Brian Kusior 鈥�19, a soft-spoken, bespectacled music major from upstate New York, told me he was most looking forward to escaping for two days from his 鈥渃haotic鈥� nine-man suite. All students at Dover would be upgrading from a twin bed to a queen, from a busy campus to a sprawling, 50,000-square-foot country house in a setting of snow-covered lawns, groves of trees, and a stone-walled garden designed in 1902 by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux.
Nzinga Moore 鈥�17 (with scarf) leads a small group discussion in the main parlor.
Halftime is a strongly choreographed dance of conversation, silence, attending, performance, walks in the woods, and meditation, and is centrally designed to foster 鈥渧ocational discernment,鈥� says Sacco. Directed by a carefully selected faculty or staff emcee, and assisted, as needed, by the staff from the Center for Student Formation, student, faculty, and staff participants explore 鈥淭hree Key Questions鈥� that were conceived by theology professor and award-winning teacher Fr. Michael Himes. What brings me joy? What am I good at? Who does the world need me to be? They also consider the 鈥淭hree Be鈥檚 of Jesuit Education,鈥� devised by Appleyard. Be attentive, be reflective, be loving. Students participate in 15 meetings over the course of the retreat: 10 plenary, and five within assigned groups of four or five students who are guided by junior and senior students, or leads, one for each group. Each group鈥攖here were seven at this Halftime retreat鈥攁lso includes a faculty or staff member, referred to as a sweep. (The lingo of leads and sweeps comes from hiking.) The lead, says Sacco, 鈥渉acks away the brush, decides where the group goes, asks the questions鈥� (Who in your life challenges you to be a better version of yourself? What prevents you from giving more of yourself to others?). The sweep is a 鈥渨isdom figure who hikes in the back in case someone twists an ankle or needs company while they walk at a slower pace.鈥� Both sweeps and leads serve as volunteers.
Sweeps speak in the small groups, offering encouragement or their own stories when they feel it appropriate. Sometimes they break silences that have grown too long. They also present two panel discussions. They are invited to take part in the retreat by Student Formation staff. Many are repeat visitors. The leads, half of whom are former participants, have trained for two months with Student Formation staff. In addition to working with the small groups, each will speak at one of the plenary meetings, telling a rehearsed eight-minute story of moments of decision in their young lives.
6 p.m.
Students, leads, and sweeps first gathered in their small groups at a dinner in a brightly lit basement dining hall. The conversations around eight oval tables were interrupted by Andrew Basler 鈥�12, MA鈥�18, a graduate assistant within Student Formation, who called the room to attention by striking a copper Tibetan singing bowl with a wood mallet.
Basler told students to expect three levels of conversation at Halftime: 鈥淢illion-Dollar Staircase Small Talk,鈥� a reference to a popular nickname for the Higgins Stairs on which students passing one another exchange brief greetings; the 鈥淗illside Caf茅 Conversation,鈥� deeper but still guarded because others are in earshot; and the 鈥淒orm Room Heart-to-heart,鈥� an open and penetrating exchange. 鈥淲e want you to be in levels two and three throughout Halftime,鈥� he told them. Kerry Cronin 鈥�87, Ph.D.鈥�15, a Center for Student Formation fellow and a popular theology instructor, has been the emcee of nine Halftime retreats. 鈥淪tudents begin the experience hesitant,鈥� she told me. 鈥淲e鈥檙e disrupting them, discomfiting them. We鈥檙e pulling them away from the superficial, shallow way culture pushes them to think about themselves.鈥�
The small student groups became acquainted over chicken quesadillas, Spanish rice, and chocolate chip cookies. The group I joined for the weekend stuck to kibitzing about the generally un-admired housing lottery, the听Gilmore Girls听reboot, and a rumor about a secret tunnel between Gasson and Devlin Hall (in reality, a crawl space containing electrical lines and steam pipes). Four hours later, following three retreat meetings, they鈥檇 be sharing personal histories.
The bowl chimed and we regrouped in what had been the estate鈥檚 main parlor, base camp for the weekend鈥檚 talks. Thirty-eight feet long and 24 feet wide, the room offers maple floors, oak paneling, framed 19th-century maps, three arched French double doors that lead to a terrace, a fireplace wide enough for a hibernating grizzly, and bookshelves packed with reminders of the house鈥檚 years as a priory (collections of the ecclesiastical journal听Angelicum, a Depression-era source of canon law commentary, and of听Review for Religious, published by the Missouri Province Jesuits). The students sat across three rows of portable chairs, while sweeps and Student Formation staff filled wing chairs against the back wall, and Sacco, who attends almost every Halftime, leaned back in a floral-patterned couch against an expansive bay window, out of the eye range of students or faculty and staff, his usual post.
Mary Troxell during her "What brings me joy?" talk on Friday night.
7:40 p.m.
Mary Troxell, an animated middle-aged woman who teaches German idealism in the philosophy department, introduced herself as Halftime 88鈥檚 emcee. She wore jeans, a half-zip fleece, and small hoop earrings. Her amber hair was bobbed. Leaning forward with her hands cupped on the dark-wood lectern in front of the fireplace, she looked like the director of a well-managed summer camp.
She began by posing the first of the Himesian questions: 鈥淲hat brings me joy?鈥� Troxell grew up, she told the students, in subsidized housing in unincorporated Pompano Highlands, Florida (she maintains a glimmer of an accent). 鈥淓mbarrassed鈥� by her family鈥檚 circumstances, she concocted an 鈥渆scape plan鈥� when she was in middle school: Earn top grades, then a lucrative job, and never return. But as an ambitious undergraduate studying long hours in the library at Amherst College in the late 1980s, Troxell developed a routine. She鈥檇 step away from her assigned reading every so often, pick a book at random from the library shelves, read for 15 minutes, then return to her work. 鈥淚 fell in love with the life of the mind,鈥� she told the crowd in the parlor. 鈥淭hat feeling of joy has served as a north star throughout my life.鈥� As she would reveal the following day in her 鈥淏e Reflective鈥� talk, it would take her years to make good on what she learned about herself as an undergraduate.
Basler then flicked off the lights, and after a few moments Halftime鈥檚 guiding spirit appeared on a projection screen on a tripod at the front of the room. Michael Himes, a priest of the Archdiocese of Brooklyn, is a short, round man in large eyeglasses. In this video, now 16 years old, he is in his early 50s and dressed in a gray wool blazer over a burgundy V-neck sweater over a white shirt and gold necktie. While a Brooklyn native, his accent wobbles back and forth between outerborough and something nearly but not quite British. Over the course of the weekend, he will introduce the 鈥淭hree Key Questions鈥� in brief videos, be