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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From Competition to Contribution: The Communal Context of Vocation

Wendell Berry critiques competition-driven economic systems, particularly in U.S. agriculture, arguing they diminish communal bonds and promote self-centered ambitions. Higher education perpetuates this by encouraging students to view success as individualistic. Instead, fostering a sense of contribution to the community can reshape students’ sense of vocation and enrich societal collaboration.

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

In “Economy and Pleasure,” Wendell Berry writes, “No individual can lead a good or a satisfying life under the rule of competition … no community can succeed except by limiting somehow the competitiveness of its members.” This impulse to compete, Berry argues, drives our economic system, which divides people into two categories: winners and losers. His particular focus in this essay is on agriculture in the United States, where he sees such competition as the dominant mentality: farmers race to acquire the education and resources necessary to defeat other farmers in a game governed by “the rules of competitive economics.”

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Hope Circuits: Jessica Ridell

The latest NetVUE podcast episode features Jessica Riddell, a professor and researcher advocating for transformative change in higher education. In her book “Hope Circuits,” she explores fostering hope, equity, and creativity within universities. Riddell emphasizes renovating existing systems rather than destroying them, aiming for integrity and human flourishing.

Jessica Riddell

The most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings features Jessica Riddell, a speaker, professor, and researcher who focuses on systems change in higher education. Jessica’s recent book, Hope Circuits: Rewiring Universities and Other Systems for Human Flourishing, and her previous co-authored book, Shakespeare’s Guide to Hope, Life, and Learning, cover various facets of educating and leading across the university. Jessica is a professor of early modern literature at Bishop’s University in Quebec, Canada, where she also holds the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence. She is the founder of the think tank Hope Circuits Institute and sits on the board of directors for the American Association of Colleges and Universities. In all these roles, she participates in a wide range of conversations at national and international levels about how universities fulfill the social contract to our broader society.

Committed to cultivating hope in higher education, Jessica wrote Hope Circuits to challenge educators to reconsider the assumptions with which we operate. In it, she offers innovative tools that emerge out of the stories of luminaries she gathered for the project and helps us come to a clearer understanding of systems of governance, leadership, and institutional culture so that everyone in the university can flourish. But such flourishing isn’t limited to higher education, which she argues plays an important role in fostering creativity and democracy across sectors. “Higher education,” she says, “is the place where we keep democracy and ourselves alive and awake. And my goodness, we need to stay alive and awake at this moment.”

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Vocation and Pedagogy III: Practicing for Life’s Journey

The integration of vocational education in biochemistry fosters a deeper understanding of character and virtue. By encouraging students to explore questions about their future roles as scientists and healthcare professionals, the approach enhances engagement and comprehension. This shift, while raising awareness of knowledge gaps, promotes profound learning despite a temporary dip in confidence.

scientists in a laboratory
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A series exploring the connections between vocation and pedagogy.

Educating students for vocation means introducing them to a more substantive understanding of a good and flourishing life. It should lead to considerations of character and virtue—ways of being and acting that give meaning, purpose, and direction.  When I first thought about integrating vocation into my teaching, I picked my junior-level biochemistry course. I thought if I could make space for these considerations in this content-heavy upper-level major course, I could find space for vocation in any course. As I contemplated my approach to this work, I wanted to ensure that what I added supported the disciplinary content and fit appropriately within the arc of students’ vocational discernment.

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Called to an “A”: Vocation and Alternative Grading

This post reflects on how best to support students’ learning and vocational exploration even as we evaluate their work. At the NetVUE conference, the author of this post reflected on the similarities between the values that guide vocation and alternative grading and explored diverse strategies for fostering student growth through alternative grading methods. Emphasizing flexibility, self-awareness, and outward orientation, these approaches aim to create a supportive learning environment. By shifting from traditional grading, professors encourage students to connect their efforts to meaningful outcomes and vocational discernment.

At the 2026 NetVUE Conference this past March, I couldn’t stop thinking about how to meet learning outcomes while at the same time cherishing students and lingering with them along their educational journeys. At the post-keynote roundtable discussions, faculty colleagues shared how they do so: Some are more lenient with grades early in the semester to boost feelings of self-efficacy, while others are less lenient to help students realize they’re still worthy of being cherished even in moments when their effort isn’t their best.

This discussion reminded me that we share similar goals but have strikingly different ways to work toward them. Yet we all think about this in terms of giving letter grades.

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I Am Not What I Do: The Vocational Dignity of All Work

This post discusses the importance of recognizing the dignity of all labor and the misconceptions surrounding vocational identity within achievement culture. It critiques how society values certain jobs over others, emphasizing that personal identity should not be tied to accomplishments. A call is made to affirm the inherent worth of every individual and their work.

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

I used to direct a justice education program at the University of Notre Dame, which was part of a large institute that offered a wide array of opportunities for students to bring their academic, professional, and personal passions into alignment and to serve the common good. Part of what made this program special was the large cohort of student leaders with whom we worked each year. Assigned to a small group of their peers, these student leaders led classroom discussions, experiential learning activities, and personal reflections that connected students to many different social issues. Our center attracted students who wanted to channel their concerns for vulnerable and marginalized populations and make a difference in the world.

During one of our weekly late-night training sessions, we were reflecting on the now famous line from Bryan Stevenson that “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve done.” My students embraced Stevenson’s thinking and his argument that a person’s identity is not defined by any particular failure. As he shows, to conflate identity and the blemishes on someone’s record is dehumanizing. It is why, in justice education, we try to identify and dismantle ways that even our language is demeaning. It is why we resist labels like “felons,” “illegals,” or (from even longer ago) “superpredators.” Stevenson helps us see that we must stand against these labels because what a person does and who a person is are not the same. Doing so reflects our ultimate commitment to human dignity.

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A Vocational Playbook: Anna Bonta Moreland

Anna Bonta Moreland, a humanities professor at Villanova University, discusses her new book, The Young Adult Playbook, designed for undergraduates. It offers guidance on vocational reflection and emphasizes the importance of work, leisure, and relationships for a fulfilling life. Moreland aims to empower students to pursue meaningful lives beyond graduation.

Anna Bonta Moreland

In April, NetVUE’s podcast Callings released an episode that featured an interview with Anna Bonta Moreland. A professor of humanities at Villanova University, Anna also holds the Anne Quinn Welsh Endowed Chair and directs the university’s honors program. While her academic expertise and research include medieval theology, interfaith dialogue, and comparative theology, she has also become passionate about educational renewal and the character and leadership formation of her students. She’s received both Templeton and Lilly Endowment grants for her work in these areas.

Recently, Anna coauthored The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like it Matters with Thomas Smith. Specifically written for undergraduates, the book invites them into and guides them in vocational reflection and discernment. But for Anna, writing the book represented her own vocational shift. It emerged out of a course she has been teaching senior honors students for the past eight years called Shaping an Adult Life—a course that helps these students, as she notes, “look beyond graduation and think about a life well lived as an adult.” While teaching the course, she felt “like I had put my finger on the raw nerve of my students’ lives,” and their “visceral” response to the course prompted her to write the book as a sort of “palate cleanser” from her previous scholarship. But it served as something more than a temporary shift in her own life as a writer, something much more significant. “This supposed palate cleanser,” she observed, “has ended up just becoming where I am, and I don’t want to leave.”

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The Uncommon Good of Theatre

The post discusses theatre’s vital role in fostering community, exploring vocation, and supporting marginalized groups, particularly queer students. It emphasizes how theatrical experiences can challenge stereotypes, enhance empathy, and allow individuals to engage with diverse identities. Ultimately, theatre promotes personal and communal growth by recognizing and embracing the “uncommon good.”

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.

STUDENT

Will you run lines with me for my acting scene?

ROOMMATE

Sure. What’s the part?

STUDENT

My character tells his best friend he’s in love with him.

(Roommate freezes, suddenly guarded.)

ROOMMATE

Wait—are you gay?

STUDENT

I don’t think so. I just want to get the scene right.

ROOMMATE

Never mind, I’m not running those lines.

(Lights fade.)

close up photography of a man
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This scene is, unfortunately, not fiction. It is rooted in real student encounters. I’ve heard these stories whispered in the wings, muttered backstage, or offered between rehearsals when a student feels safe enough to speak. Often students don’t name these moments as trauma—because they’ve been trained to believe it is normal to be shamed. But they are traumatic. They are moments in which students begin to doubt not just their talent, but their belonging. And that doubt, left unspoken, corrodes the heart of their calling.

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From Pipes to Lenses: Refocusing Our Vision for Vocation

This post reflects on the disconnect in education that pressures students into specific career paths rather than encouraging self-discovery. Resisting the tendency to view education as a pipeline, this post encourages us to see it through a lens. Ultimately, it advocates for guiding students to uncover their passions, fostering authentic vocational discernment rather than conforming to predefined roles.

As a college professor who teaches undergraduate students, I often ask them some version of the question that we ask kindergarteners: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A kindergartner might answer, “astronaut,” “superhero,” or “dog-treat baker.” But by the time a student considers college, the answer starts to shed its innocence; it becomes weightier, accompanied by a concrete plan that students imagine will allow no deviations.

pipelines on the mountainside
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When I was in college, I thought I would become a rural doctor: not because I loved science (at least not in the way it was presented in school), but because of something harder to name that centered on a sense of place and a desire to serve a community that looked like mine. Because I was good at school—and good students who wanted to help people where I come from became doctors—my teachers prompted me to study science, and my vocational guidance ended. I was rarely challenged as to why, nor was I asked what else I loved, in order to understand why that might matter.

What nobody asked—and what our current system was not built to ask—was why this approach should ultimately determine a person’s calling. To ponder this question, we need to think about our current pipeline-like system and how we got here.

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