Wake Up With Purpose!: What I've Learned in My First Hundred Years

by Jean Dolores Schmidt

At my age I’m always happy when I wake up.

if you’re not moving forward, you’re going to get left behind real quick.

if I notice I’m distracted, which is natural, I try to get myself back to God. When you have so much on your mind, it’s easy to be distracted. We’re human beings, after all.

I think we could all be a little happier and more productive if we set aside quiet time, especially at the start of our days. Even five or ten minutes of silent reflection can be enough.

The Examen provides for silent reflections on thanksgiving, petition, review, response, and a prayer for tomorrow.

I do think having a daily, consistent purpose has kept me not only alive but young and vibrant.

I’ve always loved my work because it never feels like work.

I’d like to think that I’ve got just as much, if not more, energy as people who are many years my junior.

By the time we all arrived in San Antonio for the Final Four, I was such a big deal that the NCAA set up my own press conference. They told me afterward I drew more reporters than Tom Brady did at the Super Bowl.

If you keep your faith, you never have to grow old.

That’s how it works with God. If you keep your faith, you never have to grow old.

got mad at my brother and kicked him. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but it landed right on his shin and he started bleeding. My mom talked to me about it, but she wasn’t much for punishments. She would rather reason with us and let us think about what was right or wrong based on our conversation.

As painful as it is to lose someone we love, it’s our mission to trust that God has His reasons for calling them home. That call will come for all of us—we just don’t know when. God is full of surprises. Most of them are pleasant, but many are not. Either way death is out of our control. The only thing we can do in those moments is hold as hard as we can to belief.

I was especially close with my paternal grandmother, Kate. She was an active churchgoer and would often take me to a German church in San Francisco called Saint Boniface. Not only did she go to services often, she also went to almost every funeral in her parish, whether she knew the person well or not. When I asked her why, she replied, “Because not everyone has family. If I go to the funeral, I know that I am there to pray and pay my respects.”

There was an important lesson in there for me. Sometimes the most important par...

It’s important to help others be happy.

My parents were incredibly understanding and accepting people. From the start, they emphasized to my brothers and me the idea that we should accept everyone no matter who they are, what they believe, who they love, and how they pray.

They emphasized that God made every one of us out of love. My mom told us, “We need to love God back, because He made you out of love. We have so much for which to be grateful.”

My dad looked at the earth and the trees and the water and knew that only God could make such beautiful things. There was no other possible explanation.

Times may be bad, but people are still good.

My mom

always told us that if we saw people in trouble, we should care for them and try to help. And that if we were good to other people, they would be good to us.

I believe we should be tolerant of other people’s mistakes. Saint Paul and Saint Peter made mistakes. Peter denied Jesus—that was a big one. Too oft...

Believe in life, believe in God, believe in the future. In doing so, it’s important to help others find happiness.

We were very lucky our parents bought a house when I was two, not only so we could have a menagerie of pets but also because it helped us financially. We owned a two-story flat and rented out the first floor for twenty-five dollars a month. It helped us get through the Depression. It became my job to ask the tenants for the rent money. I guess that made me the “muscle” of the family.

I’m grateful for the memories and especially for the values my relatives passed along. They wanted me to be accepting, loving, and kind to everyone I met.

A dream without a plan is just a dream.

For girls’ basketball, the court was divided into three zones, and each player could only play in one of them. There were two forwards and two guards at each end, and then two centers in the middle along with two others whose position was called “sides.” Although they made those rules for girls because they didn’t think that we were as strong physically as the boys, girls and women have since proven that they can do a lot of things that people didn’t think they were able to do.

There are so many benefits to competition. It really helps develop life skills. If we sit back and don’t compete, our character doesn’t grow. That’s why I believe competition should start when children are young.

Our Postulant Directress taught us the process of meditating. She wanted us to meditate for a half hour each morning, which at the time seemed like an eternity.

a dream without a plan is just a dream. Plans require action, and action requires persistence.

If you’re lucky enough to have a dream that is so powerful you’re willing to work for it, you end up with a life that is teeming with purpose. I thank God every day that He planted such a beautiful dream in my heart all those years ago and then blessed me with the fortitude to make it come true.

The biggest thing I learned was to be patient with myself. There was so much I didn’t know and had to improve upon, but I had to trust that God would get me there eventually.

If the students aren’t learning, it’s often the teacher’s fault, not theirs.

Life’s too short to be stressed all the time.

“It’s better to wear out than rust out.”

I always understood that the key to being a successful principal is to have a competent faculty, and I knew I had that. I had two lay teachers and the rest were sisters, and they were all terrific. It’s a lot like coaching basketball: you’re only as good as your players. I may have been new to the job, but I knew right away that I was part of a winning team.

one time we did get a flat tire on the way home. I managed to coax the car into a gas station so it could be fixed. I called the house to assure the sisters that the game hadn’t gone into overtime and we would be home shortly. On another occasion, I drove the team through a bad snowstorm. When we got to the game, we learned that the referees couldn’t make it. I offered to serve as a replacement. Both teams agreed, and we had the match. I can’t imagine something like that happening today.

Back then there was an unwritten rule in college basketball that a team should not have more than two Black players in the game at the same time. Loyola’s coach, George Ireland, regularly played three or four Black players. The team made the NCAA tournament, but once they got to the second round, they encountered a problem. Their opponent was supposed to be Mississippi State, but in Mississippi there was another unwritten rule that white players were not supposed to play with or against Black players. When the Mississippi State president said he would send the team to Michigan to play the game, several state politicians tried to prevent them from leaving. So the team literally had to sneak out of the state to play the game, which Loyola won, 61–51.

That has come to be referred to as “the Game of Change.” It’s an inspiring story because it reminds all of us of the power of sports to bring people together through all kinds of barriers. One of the best parts about basketball is that the ball doesn’t know the race of the hand that shoots it. If the arc is true, the ball goes in.

racism (and understandably so) that they end up shouting and arguing with one another instead of listening and reasoning with one another. That results in people talking only to people who are like them and agree with them. The classroom is often a much better environment for people to discuss their different perspectives, work out their differences, and try to reach some kind of consensus.

Jesus taught us to love one another no matter what our differences—indeed, because of our differences. I really believe that if we could just see one another the way God sees us, this kind of nonsense would never take place.

We need to be at least a little uncomfortable in order to grow.

I’ve always tried to remember that when faced with change and to trust that God’s plan will work out in the end.

Maybe I’m a Pollyanna, maybe I’m an eternal optimist, maybe I’m delusional. But I am who I am. Hope makes me happy.

On the one hand, I understood that women were being denied access to opportunities, especially jobs, that were being made available only to men. That wasn’t right. On the other hand, I felt some of the feminists were going too far. I don’t think someone should get a job or be elected to political office simply because she’s a woman. It doesn’t do anybody any good if they are hired into a position for which they are not qualified.

It was the first time I was going to live with students rather than with nuns. I was fifty-three years old at the time, but it never occurred to me that I was too old. I had as much energy as any college student—and still do!

Sometimes people think that having faith means never being angry, hurt, or sad. That’s not true at all. Separation from anybody you love is difficult. We can trust God’s plan, believe that our loved ones who have left us have gone to heaven, and still mourn their passing. Sadness and suffering are a part of life. If you have faith, those things can bring you closer to God. I believe it’s God’s purpose to help us through the suffering, not avoid it altogether.

I prayed often and trusted that God has a reason for everything.

When they expressed their frustrations that God would allow this to happen, I told them, “It’s okay to get mad at God. You can talk to Him any way you want.”