Finding Your Vocation in College

Anthony Sacramone asked me to write something on “How to Find Your Vocation in College” for the I.S.I. website he edits, so I did.  I also took the opportunity to answer the conservative pundits who are saying that college students should all go into technology so they can pay off their student loans and forget about the liberal arts.  Also, Mathew Block at First Thoughts linked to the post and added some perceptive comments of his own.

The first couple paragraphs:

From the time you were five years old, someone was always asking you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Maybe you answered “a cowboy” or “a princess,” but you really didn’t know. As you get older, the pressure intensifies. “A professional baseball player.” “A veterinarian.” Now you are in college, but you still don’t know. You have to pick a major, but how do you know (1) whether you will get a job, and (2) whether you will be satisfied with that job should you even get one.

Vocational Training

These are all struggles about your vocation. That word has become a synonym for “job,” so that colleges debate the extent to which higher education should be primarily vocational training or whether it should have higher goals, such as cultivating the intellect. But vocation is simply the Latinate word for “calling.” It is one of those theological words—like inspiration, revelation, mission, and vision—that has been taken over by the corporate world and drained of its meaning. The idea is that what you do for a living can be a calling. From God. That He has made you in a certain way and given you certain talents, opportunities, and inclinations. He then calls you to certain tasks, relationships, and experiences.

Your job is only a part of that, and sometimes not the most important part.

Read the rest at the site:   How to Find Your Vocation in College | Intercollegiate Review.