The Baccalaureate Mass reflection that Andy did, for those who want to see the original copy... this is almost exactly what he spoke:

My name is Andrew Dost, member of the class of 2004.

But are you a member of the class of 2004? Take this simple quiz and find out! Do you: (A) Remember the infamous pep assembly of tennis balls; (B) Remember Mr. Byrne’s ceramic piggy bank; (C) Remember the final Walk at St. Ignatius; or (D) Have a class ring that says “2004” on it.

Sure, you could be told about these things. Or you could’ve been a shadow and seen them. Or Josten’s could forge that class ring for you…

But that’s beside the point. We have a lot of memories stored up, and we all have our Firsts here at Iggy. I remember my first class here, Intro to Tech during the summer.

I also remember the first time I got lost here… Intro to Tech during the summer. And then the second time lost, following Charlie Lucas up to Speech that same day. We got advice from a helpful senior: “Room 464? Oh man, you gotta hike…”

Some good came from a hard-to-find speech class. I made my first Ignatius friends, including the person who proved to me that I could make friends here: Zam, a person who chooses to spell his name with three letters instead of the standard Polish 37-letter name.

Another good memory: the time I wandered into Room 258 one fateful Tuesday, sophomore year. Content to watch some Improv and, above all else, not get involved, wasn’t I rudely awakened when I was sent up on stage to do object work. The rest is history. I made my best friends, and received my worst bruises from the performing art of Improvisational Theatre.

My first dance… hmm… Turnabout sophomore year. Yes, you remember that. The driving around, the deep dish pizza on Sarah’s lap, the actual dance…There’re also service trips: remember Harlan, KY, my fellow COAP alums, and my incessant journaling throughout the trip?

I cannot count on my hands the number of birthdays, performances, and dances I’ve been to now in these four years. Or the number of times I’ve struck out, in the dating sense, the past four years.

Ignatius taught me to be who I am. Pressure reveals exactly who you are, and God truly knows we’re counted among the most pressured students in the world. Show of hands, who here took more than one AP test this year? …I thought so.

What have I learned from pressure? I came into Ignatius a soft-spoken boy, afraid of podiums, spotlights, and microphones. Now I can be pretty loud-mouthed, talkative, and annoying… you know, jump around the stage, flail around. Hey, and there’s no more fear of public speaking! I took this job I’m doing right now, didn’t I?

The greatest assets of St. Ignatius are the people. Seriously, sappiness aside, people here are the reason to go through all the pressure. Anyone here can just as easily find themselves in a heated political argument as a deep discussion of the hottie two pews behind you. We have our humor as well as our seriousness: we all learn to have these. From this, many of us have lifelong friends within these hallowed halls.

And for the icing on the cake, I learned from Raymond how much paper it takes to make a miniature dragon out of student handbooks.

Now, that we’re here reminiscing, we can see what time we’ve reached. Maybe we aced a final. Or had a beautiful prom date. Yes, these are all signs that we’ve reached a time, a time where we need to add the word “final” to everything. Final game, final concert, final show… here we are at a final mass! So, my advice: we keep the world of Ignatius lifelong as much as humanly possible. We are the class of 2004, and we’ve got rings to prove it. Thank you.