Article by Maureen Suelau
My background is in accounting, and as the chief financial officer at Notre Dame Preparatory School (NDP), bean-counting was certainly a large part of my job. Over the course of 10 years, I accounted for everything from rolled pennies to millions of dollars. I also did more, of course, including working with the school’s headmistress and board of trustees to oversee finances and operations, and serving as a liaison to committees including finance, investment and buildings and grounds.
But NDP has a unique end product, one that required me to look beyond numbers and make every spreadsheet worthwhile. That product is the 150 young women who walk down the aisle toward their diploma and bright future each May. I retired from NDP at the end of the 2014–15 school year, and I already miss what I cherished most in my work there: those energetic, respectful, smiling, intelligent, articulate and fun students.
I was blessed with many opportunities outside the classroom that added new dimensions to my time in front of the computer or reporting to auditors.
NDP is a Catholic college preparatory school for girls in grades 6–12. To just “count the beans” without attempting to know my product seemed counterintuitive. Each morning, before I accounted for a thing, I was greeted by smiling faces, swinging ponytails and the sounds that help to shape students’ minds. Most days, my interaction with this priceless asset was limited, but I was blessed with many opportunities outside the classroom that added new dimensions to my time in front of the computer or reporting to auditors.
My first such experience came when I was asked to chaperone a junior homeroom retreat, an annual event where homerooms spent two days at off-campus retreat centers to focus on their relationships with themselves, their families, their friends and God. I got to know each junior girl at the retreat and in the months that followed, and after that first year I no longer felt like an accountant in a widget factory.
During Holy Week (the last week of Lent and the week preceding Easter), NDP sends students on service trips to El Salvador and Starkville, Mississippi. Over the course of several years, I accompanied a group of seniors to Mississippi, where through NDP’s longstanding relationship with Habitat for Humanity we helped build a new house for a deserving family. Without fail, this was a magical experience. Starkville is a hospitable, religious and spiritual place. We joined the community in celebrating Holy Week, and local churches fed us until we could eat no more. (The photo above is from one such trip.)
Yet another regular trip involved joining the NDP music department on “music adjudication” trips, where 100 or more students from band, orchestra and chorus compete with students from other schools. I had the privilege of seeing these talented young women perform in Toronto, Canada as well as Williamsburg, Virginia.
Finally, the entire senior class travels to New York City every January for two nights of theater, restaurants and sightseeing. I cherished being with them before we exported them to colleges and universities around the country, and I took pride in seeing the young women they had become.
How will I fill my time now that I am settling into retirement? Thankfully, I might be too busy to miss the students too much. My three daughters live in three different states, so I’m making it a priority to spend more time with them. I am rediscovering golf, which I love but put on sabbatical during those busy NDP years. I enjoy needlepoint and have gotten into some fun projects. I volunteer for Swim Across America, which benefits cancer research. And I plan to spend more time at the beach, read more books and more fully enjoy the relationships that I cherish most.
My job at NDP was a joy, and I am both grateful for the experience and proud of the “product” we delivered to the world. But the leisure time I have now is pretty wonderful too.
