Reflection offered by George Wolo

"Good morning everyone, my name is George Wolo. I am a senior at Good Counsel and I am currently a member of the school’s XBSS leadership team. To start off I would like to recognize and congratulate all of you on becoming new members of the GC falcon family and making it into one of the top private schools in the state. This is not something that was easily accomplished and shouldn’t go unnoticed, so for that give yourselves a hand.

I’m gonna be honest with you, when I was asked to do this speech I wasn’t too sure about it. I’ve never made a speech or even spoken in front of 1,000 people before. Where would I start? What would say? But not to long after I realized out of the 1,200 students that go here everyday, they asked me to come and speak in front of you this morning. So in my typical competitive fashion, I accepted the challenge and got to work.

Good Counsel is a Xaverian Brothers sponsored school and from here on out you will soon begin to familiarize yourself with the five Xaverian values: simplicity, humility, compassion, zeal, and trust. You might’ve seen them plastered across the arches in our hallways as you walked in. The reason why I’m here today is to talk about one of those values. Every year the school picks one of the values to put special emphasis on for the year. This year we chose TRUST.

Out of all of the five values, there is something that separates TRUST from the rest, there’s something special about it. It requires two parties for it to work, unlike the other values that are based solely off of the individual and how he or she decide to carry themselves. With TRUST, it requires you to reach beyond yourself and have enough faith to put something that is important to you into the hands of someone or something. Think about it… this morning when you got up you TRUSTED your alarm or your parents to wake you up, you TRUSTED your car to get you to your destination safely, and to all the parents in the room you allowed your child to attend this school because you TRUST that this school will provide them with a quality education and the tools they’ll need to be equipped enough to go out into the world as young adults and reach their fullest potential. This simple concept of trust impacts every single facet of our day and every decision we make. But yet at the same time it’s so delicate and fragile and all it takes is one mistake or one act of dishonesty for it to be totally broken. There are levels to trust and it is very complex when you take the time to really reflect on it.

So to all you freshman, as you open up this new chapter in your lives and navigate through this new world called “high school”, I encourage you to make good decisions and be wise about the people you decide to hang around. Make sure that you can TRUST yourself to make those hard decisions that come around every now and then in life. Make sure you can TRUST that the people you decide to call your friend and hang out with have it out for your best interest. If you follow these two things, I can assure you that when you look back on high school you won’t have many regrets. Thank you and welcome to GC. Go Falcons!"