I could say hello to some of those leaders when we passed on a pathway by the lake, and they would recognize me. Ara Parseghian had a son who worked at the hockey camp. I was already friends with Joe Yonto’s kids. I didn’t seek them out, and I never thought once about using those friendships as some sort of a connection to give me a leg up to their dads, but it’s funny how people come into your life when you’re open to it, when you’re pursuing your dreams without question. As embarrassing as my audacity of knocking on the administrators’ doors at midnight might have seemed from the outside, it was exactly my audacity that got me noticed. When the fall semester began, I moved up to the fourth floor in St. Joe’s. My room was in the back this time, with a perfect, unobstructed view over the treetops to the Golden Dome across the lake. I took inspiration from that every time I sat at my little desk. And yet, despite that view, and despite a series of late-night Grotto prayer sessions, I still had plenty of bottled-up anxiety and frustration heading into my second year.
