LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY / Daily News

Jackie Mitzel, a freshman at Ave Maria University, top left, prays before lunch with her fellow school mates inside the student union dining hall at Ave Maria last week.

LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY / Daily News

Jackie Mitzel, center, a freshman at Ave Maria University, says goodbye to her friend Catherine Plishka while walking through town to go to a meeting at The Bean last week in Ave Maria.

Editors note: When Ave Maria University and town opened last summer in eastern Collier County, it marked one of the most ambitious educational, religious, environmental and real estate developments in the history of Southwest Florida. This is the last in an occasional series of stories following 19-year-old Jackie Mitzel of Fargo, N.D., through her freshman year at the university.

It was the day after classes ended for the year at Ave Maria University and the sounds of coffee grinding and babies crying greeted freshman Jackie Mitzel when she entered the town’s eatery, The Bean. Mitzel came with four sisters from her household, or spiritual sorority, called Daughters of the Little Way. Six of the household’s members live on the same floor as Mitzel in the school’s Siena dorm. The floor is base for the school’s women’s discernment program, reaching out to students who are considering Catholic religious life as a nun.

At a podium in the Bean stood Mitzel’s possible future. Dressed in a flowing white habit and a veil was Sister Mary Grace, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Mary religious order and teacher at Ave Maria town’s K-12 prep school. Sister Mary Grace was making her last preparations for a speech on the Virgin Mary. Mitzel sat at a table with her four friends. While she waited for the blueberry smoothie she had ordered to arrive, Mitzel took out a black and white book and pen to take notes.

Mitzel’s freshman year at Ave Maria went quicker than she ever thought it would. She learned that she couldn’t leave eight-page papers to the day before they were due, choir provided a great escape from the daily grind and she enjoyed Dante and Milton. This summer, she plans to be a hostess at an Italian restaurant back home in North Dakota.

Not far from her mind will be one of the most formative parts of her first year: the time she has taken to discern her religious calling. There are 10 women living on the floor who are at different stages of the process. Some, Mitzel said, know they’ve been called to religious life. Others have left the program because they know they haven’t.

Mitzel is still feeling out it all. She had little interaction with nuns before attending Ave Maria, but has been intrigued since high school when she attended Catholic World Youth Day in 2005. At Ave Maria, she has gone on retreats with religious orders, including the Dominican Sisters, had an audience with Diocese of Venice Bishop Frank Dewane and, over Thanksgiving, went on a pilgrimage to a monastery and shrine in Alabama. She’s learned about how she’d grapple with poverty, chastity and obedience.

And she has little idea how close she is to figuring out her future.

When asked how she will know whether she has discerned a religious vocation, Mitzel said it will become clear.

“It’s like, how do you know who to marry?” Mitzel said. “You just know.”

For a decision based almost entirely on faith, Mitzel’s process is analytical. First, she had an interest so she joined the discernment program. Now she’s figuring out her options. That means talking to friends and interacting with nuns to see if anything becomes clear. It also means not dating. It’s not that she’s uninterested, or that she doesn’t have male friends, but just that she believes dating would be a distraction.

Should she begin to feel a stronger pull toward becoming a nun, she would look at what order would be best for her, such as one that emphasizes nursing or teaching.

At each step, the key is prayer.

“If religious life is what I’m called to, there will be a peace there,” she said. “I will be most happy where God’s leading me.”

If it turns out instead Mitzel becomes a mom and raises a family that’s OK, too. What Mitzel does know is that she’s a people person and whatever she decides to do will involve helping people.

Of course, other decisions will have to come first, like her college major.

Sitting next to Mitzel at the Bean was Sister Mary David, also a Dominican Sister who lives in the town. Sister Mary David knew Mitzel well from the order’s retreat. Sister Mary David couldn’t answer a question about if she believed Mitzel might join her someday.

“She seems beautifully open to God’s grace,” Sister Mary David said. “But a vocation is kind of a mystery between God and you and God’s grace. It takes time.”

During the speech, Sister Mary David sat fingering her rosary beads. Next to her, Mitzel’s hands were empty. She played with her fingernails.