Why Vocation is Never Solitary

This explores the relationship between self-awareness, vocational exploration, and community feedback. It emphasizes the importance of balancing individual and collective identities, suggesting that insights from trusted others can reveal strengths and blind spots. The Johari window tool is recommended for deeper self-understanding and growth in vocational contexts.

A series drawing on a therapist’s insights into play, wandering, and presence in relation to vocational exploration and discernment.

In the first post of my series, I offered a method of reviewing your childhood self at play as a way to provide insight into your being-role, an aspect of yourself that is necessary to cultivate to flourish vocationally. This approach could suggest incorrectly that vocational exploration is primarily inward focused and solitary. But vocational understanding requires more than introspection. From our earliest moments, self-understanding emerges in relationships with others whom we trust and who can clarify strengths or needs that develop latent attributes within us. Exploring vocation requires both inward and “other-ward” attention.

collage photo of woman
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In this post, I offer a reminder that we are never simply an “I” unto ourselves. U.S. culture—especially in academic contexts—heavily skews toward individualistic notions of the self, yet there is always a “we” in any “me.” Many of our collective networks speak powerfully to our identities and the manifest forms of our vocations if given the opportunity. Social psychology posits that in any one individual there are many varied selves dependent on the social environment. The self that you reveal to your family at home around the dinner table is notably different from the one you present at a professional conference. Both are authentically you, but specific aspects of the self are more dominant in each environment. Often different aspects of ourselves may be more visible in a particular social context and therefore may be witnessed more directly by those in our life and somewhat obscure from our own recognition.

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What’s Next? The Dignity of Work in a Culture of Climbing

The author reflects on the impact of the “What’s next?” mentality, which can lead to stress and dissatisfaction among students focused on future achievements. He contrasts this attitude with the need to feel contentment in our present work and lives. Promoting a sense of dignity in labor may help cultivate healthier aspirations and appreciation for the present.

A series on vocation, the dignity of labor, and the misconceptions that prevent us from valuing all work.

My favorite show of all time is The West Wing, and the evidence of that love is everywhere. Questions from the series adorn my computer at work. I have Toby’s rubber brainstorming ball in my office. I devoured podcasts about the show years after it went off the air. I’ve bought my wife West Wing gifts, as she has for me. And it’s possible that two of my kids were named after characters from the show (okay, that was a coincidence). The most famous line from the show is probably the oft-repeated phrase, “What’s next?” These words are President Bartlet’s motto as he navigates his days in the Oval Office—his way of saying that the present task is done, and it is time to turn our attention to other matters. I love its crisp, clear, directional tone and the way he uses this phrase to lead his team through their shared work together. As I’ve watched the series over and over, these words have wormed their way into my lexicon as well. I’m guessing my fellow West Wing fans can relate!

There is another way of asking that question, though, that is less helpful, particularly for those of us who work in the field of vocation. I remember when my son—who is about to start college this fall—was in the eighth grade and visited a local high school. The guidance counselor, not surprisingly, asked him what kind of college he hoped to get into one day. He rattled off an answer and the counselor responded that if he wanted to get into that college, he would have to test out of freshman level math that day, as an eighth grader. It was disheartening to see the way a middle-school student tied his college hopes to the outcome of an exam he had to take at age 14. This exam created an overwhelming amount of undue stress. In his mind, it carried the fortunes not of his next step of high school, but his next-next step.

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Sustaining Our Vocations with Purpose and Joy

This post introduces a co-authored series addressing the vocational challenges faculty members face in higher education. The authors share their personal experiences as they reflect on their own vocational shifts at work. They emphasize the need for a sustainable approach to vocation, highlighting key themes like recognizing limits, the importance of community, and cultivating joy in their work to support faculty thriving.

The first post in a co-authored series on what faculty members need to thrive vocationally.

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After receiving the news that I, Elisabeth, had been awarded tenure and promoted in the spring of 2023 at age 39, I felt elated—and then, immediately burned out. Certainly, the summer before, when I submitted my application, had been arduous. My family sold and bought a house, we moved, my husband started a new job, my kids started at new schools, and we all got COVID. Then the school year seemed to fill every possible nook and cranny of time. As news of this milestone spread, colleagues asked, “How do you feel?” I answered, “I need to figure out how to do this job sustainably and with joy. Or I need to do something else.”

I, Kristin, accepted my first job as an assistant professor in 2021 when I was 37 years old, following five years of graduate school and ten years as a high school teacher. I enjoyed teaching but was ready to pursue research and writing more intentionally. By the time I turned 40, I had developed seven different courses across four programs and was serving on several committees, mostly unrelated to my research. I realized I needed to pivot and try again, or I would never reach my research goals before going up for tenure.

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AI and the Defiant Hope of Vocation

Recent seasons of prominent TV shows feature generative AI, reflecting its influence on various parts of society, including higher education. Addressing AI’s role in vocation work is essential, as it impacts human purpose and agency. Through NetVUE, discussions can explore AI’s transformative potential while encouraging a nuanced understanding of its implications limitations. Ultimately, NetVUE provides a much needed space to figure out how best to respond to this existential threat.

Storylines about generative artificial intelligence played key roles in the most recent seasons of several award-winning television shows, as viewers of The Comeback, Hacks, and The Pitt can attest to. These storylines are not surprising: AI is reshaping everything in our world from art and commerce to education and health care, and more pointedly, labor protections related to AI were a key feature of the 2023 writers’ strike in Hollywood. AI has also impacted higher education, itself full of events, institutes, seminars, conferences, and statements, with resources for faculty, staff, administrators, and campuses to engage in conversations about AI.

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Given how AI has come to fill every nook and cranny of our culture—and likely your campus and professional life as well—what unique contributions does NetVUE bring to this conversation?

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Building a Vocational Praxis of Teamwork

This post explores how community-engaged learning (CEL) fosters vocational exploration through teamwork. It highlights the transformative potential of collaborative experiences, enabling students to enhance communication skills and discover their personal and communal responsibilities. Real-life examples illustrate how teamwork can significantly impact personal growth and understanding of vocation as a shared journey.

A series on the role that community-engaged learning can play in vocational exploration and discernment.

silver and black pens on a black surface
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As previous posts in this series have illustrated, community-engaged learning (CEL) is a powerful pedagogy for facilitating vocational exploration. This post builds on those insights to show how opportunities for teamwork in CEL projects can further deepen vocational work. Most faculty members recognize that teamwork enables students to construct knowledge together, simulating the kind of collaboration, problem-solving, and communication that is ubiquitous in professional environments. Indeed, teamwork promotes the vital skills that the National Association of Colleges and Employers heralds, which include the following:

  • Careful listening,
  • Understanding and asking appropriate questions,
  • Managing conflict and making compromises,
  • Interacting with and respecting diverse viewpoints and personalities
  • Meeting ambiguity with resilience and agility,
  • Meeting one’s responsibilities, and
  • Developing strong, positive working relationships.

But teamwork also empowers students to discover their gifts and talents, to consider their life purpose, and to examine how their life journeys are, as Erin VanLaningham writes, not “singular paths,” but rather roads intersecting with and affected by others. Teamwork shows how our lives are “called forth by others,” in Jason Mahn’s framing, because it enables us to build new relationships in purposeful communities. This post provides an example of an intentionally designed teamwork experience in a CEL seminar to show how this high-impact practice of collaboration can be marshaled for vocational discovery.

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Theatre for Vocational Discernment

Theatre plays a significant role in vocational exploration and community-building by encouraging students to take risks and engage deeply with their identities. Through acting classes and other theatre-related experiences, students discover their purpose and develop confidence, fostering essential skills for their future vocations and creating a supportive community environment.

A series on the role of theatre in vocation, with a focus on how it supports community-building, the uncommon good, and vocational exploration and discernment for all our students.

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Lights up on theatre acting classroom, full equally of theatre and non-theatre students. Students stand in a circle.

STUDENT

(To the theatre instructor)

Wait, what are you asking me to do? Make a weird sound?

THEATRE INSTRUCTOR

Yes! Anything you feel inside, just let it out.

STUDENT

Um, okay, sorry, I don’t know if I’m doing this right.

THEATRE INSTRUCTOR

Try not to worry if it’s right, anything that comes out is fine. The goal is to take the risk to be silly and discover it’s okay.

team in a huddle
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STUDENT

(Looks around nervously and blurts out)

BAAAHHHH!!!

(Class erupts in applause and laughter.)

OTHER STUDENTS

(overlapped adlibbing)

Yes, that was great! Loved it! So good! Knew you could do it! Fun!

Lights fade as STUDENT can’t help but smile out of pride.

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Teaching to Live: An Interview with Almeda M. Wright

Almeda M. Wright

For Almeda Wright—who’s featured in the most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast, Callings—human flourishing depends in large part on a vision of abundance, resilience, and thriving. She notes that it does not mean that everything in our lives always goes “perfectly well,” but we do have to have “the support and the resources to encounter whatever emerges.” Even amidst difficulty, we have the capacity to flourish. “When hard times come,” she notes, you can still thrive, if “you feel that there are resources, communities, people, a sense of purpose, a sense of calling, a sense of God, or a spirituality that allows you to face it and not be overwhelmed by it.”

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Vocation and Values: An Undergraduate Perspective

Recent graduate, Hector Aponte reflects on his experiences as a NetVUE student ambassador at Norwich University, where he guided peers through their vocational journeys. He emphasizes the importance of discussions around values rather than abstract concepts of vocation, helping students align their career choices with personal values and beliefs. Aponte encourages early exploration of values to foster purposeful lives and living of the “good life.”

The first post in a series featuring undergraduate student voices reflecting on their experiences of vocation and calling.

As an undergraduate student, one of the most rewarding experiences I had was helping a peer navigate an uncertain future they weren’t yet able to envision fully. As they discerned their potential career, they struggled to start this process and to consider everything needed as they tried to make an informed choice. They were aware of the impact their decision would have on where they might work, what kind of life they would live, the possibility of having a family, and future educational pursuits. I sympathized with their challenge and was pleased to offer as much support and guidance as I could; I had been in a similar situation just a few years prior, but this time I had a better sense of where to start.

Hector Aponte (right) with Nick Lavery, an Army Green Beret who visited Norwich as part of its NetVUE ambassador program in 2025.

I was able to support my friend because of my role as a NetVUE student ambassador on my campus during my junior and senior years. In this role, I provided information and resources to my peers, scheduled events and speakers, and worked with faculty to share the importance of thinking about vocation with their students and walking with them on their vocational journey. A focus on vocation and calling can provide a critical foundation that helps us as students find purpose and meaning in our lives. Being an ambassador allowed me to help other students navigate the questions that accompany the discernment of our vocations, and I was drawn to this role because my sense of vocation includes helping others achieve what I learned Aristotle called eudaimonia, or the good life.

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Active Listening as Vocational Discernment

We live in a distracted age in which smartphones and social media threaten to interrupt us constantly, but especially college students who often struggle to maintain focus and attention. Yet attentiveness is essential for vocational exploration and discernment. This post explores how active listening can help mitigate distractions, foster meaningful conversations, and support students in their journey to figure out who they are and how they want to be in their futures.

“We’ll leave the TV and the radio behind. Don’t you wonder what we’ll find?”

Joe Jackson

Decades before smartphones and tablets, Joe Jackson’s lyrics about an upcoming date night anticipates an evening without the media distractions of that time.

Although media platforms have changed, such distractions are still plentiful and time consuming. Most college students spend more than four hours per day on their smartphones, and nearly half of teenagers say they’re online “almost constantly.” At any time, we can escape our present circumstances and explore unlimited opportunities for stimulation. No longer forced to make small talk or sit with our thoughts, we can explore colorful, scintillating messages from anywhere.

photo of people engaged on their phones
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While these platforms can connect us, they also compete for our limited attention. Attentiveness is essential to vocational discernment, so much so that Scott Mattingly describes it as the “foundation of every vocational journey.” In Living Vocationally: The Journey of the Called Life, Paul Wadell and Charles Pinches describe attentiveness as a virtue that helps us to be fully present. “We cannot be responsible,” they write, “without an accurate perception of reality, and we cannot accurately perceive reality without growing in attentiveness.”

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Re-discovering Life’s Purposes through Childhood Play

This post discusses the importance of understanding one’s vocational identity through the exploration of “being-roles,” which are modes of existence reflecting innate attributes. The author emphasizes the value of childhood experiences and play in revealing these roles, suggesting that vocational discernment is a continuous process of self-discovery and narrative evolution.

The first post in a series drawing on a therapist’s insights into play, wandering, and presence in relation to vocational exploration and discernment.

happy children in mantles playing outdoors
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As a therapist for almost two decades, I’ve listened many times to clients voice their vocational confusion as they ask, with a gnawing ache, “Who am I?” and “What is my life for?” and “Is this all there is?”

The ages of my clients have varied widely, but their quest for meaning and the identity distress they’ve experienced are similar. In his work on psychosocial development over the course of our lives, Erik Erickson recognized identity, relationships, and service as innate human crises to be resolved during different ages. He noted that, in adolescence, we struggle with identity vs. role confusion; in middle adulthood, generativity vs. stagnation; and in late adulthood, integrity vs. despair. Identity formation and meaning making are not single developmental tasks but recurring psychological negotiations across the lifespan.

As we negotiate these phases, psychologists Dan McAdams and Kate McLean theorize that people develop a “narrative,” an evolving life story, that helps them make sense of transitions, challenges, and their place in the world. As a result, questions of meaning may re-emerge during young adulthood, midlife, and retirement, when individuals are often revising the stories that they tell about themselves. These theories about our developmental stages and narrative identity suggest that vocational angst is not a failure of direction, but a recurring process of meaning reconstruction throughout one’s life.

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