Seniors can reflect on their Creighton experience and how they want to move foreword by attending the Senior Retreat during Senior Week. The retreat is scheduled for May 13 and 14 at the Creighton Retreat Center and will be lead by pastoral minister Craig Zimmer. Students can sign up on the Creighton website.

For anyone who has been on a retreat, he or she will understand the personal Zimmer explained that he wanted seniors to have the opportunity to slow down and reflect before they left the university for the last time. Zimmer says that the retreat will consist of time for the seniors to reflect individually, share and discuss in small groups and have one-on-one conversations. For anyone who has been on a spiritual retreat he or she can understand the peace and clarity that can come from a time or just simple reflection, and seniors may need that most of all as they leave to go out into the world.

Zimmer also said he believes that having a retreat is an important way to complete the Jesuit education.

“At a Jesuit university like Creighton, which is so influenced by Ignatian Spirituality, it’s really important that we don’t just go from one thing to the next without taking time to ask ourselves about the larger meaning,” Zimmer said. “A retreat like this is really integral to an Ignatian way of proceeding, and thus it is very integral to the mission of the university. If we didn’t offer it, we would be falling short of being who we say we are.”

While a great way to end the Jesuit education, retreats are a good way for a senior to look at their Creighton experience as a whole, both the education and the extracurricular. Seniors have the opportunity to consider what they have learned and how they have changed and grown. It gives them the opportunity to look at how they have been touched by their friends and teachers and or how they have touched others. Finally it will give them a chance think about how they can use what they have learned in the years to come, whether they go into a job, an internship, graduate or any other future plan.

Arts & Sciences seniors Brittany Berberich and Taylor Baumann said they plan on going on the Senior Retreat and encourage their fellow classmates to participate.

“I wanted to be able to share that experience one last time at Senior retreat; to reflect on how far I have come since those first few weeks at Creighton, to reflect on where my life is taking me and to spend time with many people who have influenced my life in one way or another,” Berberich said. “I hope it will be a good time of recognizing and being grateful for what has happened in the past, let it go, and move forward.”

“I think that this perspective is something that many of the seniors are looking for as we move on into the next phase of our lives,” Baumann said. “We’ve spent the last four years growing together; the Senior Retreat gives us that opportunity to come together as a community and take a snapshot of our final moments as a class, while looking forward into wherever life’s next step leads. Taking time to recognize those friendships and gain perspective is especially important as we prepare to separate across the country. That’s why I signed up, at least.”