Title: Catholic Pre-Exam Prayer

General Information about item:

• Customary Folklore, Superstition
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: RW
• Date Collected: 10-27-2021

Informant Data:

RW is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is a sophomore (‘24) at Dartmouth College. She is an English major and plans on attending law school. She attended The Mount school in Flourtown, Pennsylvania which is an all-girls Catholic high school. Her mom also attended this high school. Both of RW’s parents were raised Catholic so her and her sibling were also raised Catholic, and they attend church regularly on Sundays.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: RW’s high school, The Mount, was very faith focused. Many members of the administration and teaching staff were Sisters of Saint Joseph which is an order of Catholic Nuns. All four years of high school, students were required to take a religion class. In addition, each Friday the whole school attended church together. The Mount prayer which is unique to her school and was said often throughout the school day.

• Social Context: RW remembers the first time that she learned the prayer was during her freshman orientation. She learned it from the principal who was giving a speech at their orientation. It wasn’t until her first test that she learned about the pre-test superstition her new high school had. Before her first test which was a math test in September of her freshman year, her teacher started with The Mount prayer. She soon realized that every other teacher started with The Mount prayer when they had a test that year. After asking a teacher, RW learned that it had been a long-standing superstition that if they said the prayer, they would do well on the test because they would have God’s help and protection. RW and the rest of The Mount student body continued to say this prayer before every test throughout high school. This piece of folklore was collected during an in-person interview with RW.

Item:

Before each test, RW and her classmates would say The Mount prayer: “Gracious god, make me an instrument of unity and reconciliation, so that like you, I may serve the dear neighbor. Amen”.

Transcript:

“My pre-test superstition is saying a prayer before a test or exam. I went to an all-girls catholic high school, and this is where I learned this superstition. Before any test in any class, not just our religion class, we would say our school’s prayer.  The prayer is “Gracious god, make me an instrument of unity and reconciliation, so that like you, I may serve the dear neighbor. Amen”. By saying this, we would have good luck and God’s help to do well on the exam. My friends and I who are now in college will still say this prayer to ourselves right before a big test.”

Informant’s Comments:

• “I was just talking to my friend the other day, and we were talking about high school, and she said that she still does this before tests. I knew that I still did it, but I was shocked how so many of my friends still said the prayer before test even in college”.

Collector’s Comments:

• It was interesting to hear RW talk about her pre-test superstition that she still has today. I went to a Catholic elementary school but then went to a secular high school, so it was interesting hearing how much religion played in her high school academics.

Collector’s Name: Caroline Carr

Tags/Keywords:

• Superstition
• American
• Female
• Prayer