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.)

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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.

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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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Re-Experiencing the 2026 NetVUE Conference

In March, NetVUE hosted its biannual conference focused on vocational programming in higher education, themed “Vocation: An Itinerary of Hope.” Keynote speakers included Norman Wirzba and Almeda M. Wright, who shared transformative ideas. Highlights were summarized in an April 16 webinar, engaging discussions on vocation, advocacy, and resources for member institutions.

This March, NetVUE hosted its biennial conference, where teams from member institutions gathered to learn from each other, experience fellowship, and deepen their advocacy in relation to vocational programming for undergraduates at institutions of higher education. This conference’s theme—Vocation: An Itinerary of Hope for Higher Education—allowed attendees to attend thoughtful presentations, learn about cutting-edge ideas in the field, and take advantage of meaningful networking opportunities. NetVUE’s webinar on April 16, 2026, (Re)experiencing the 2026 NetVUE Conference, shared highlights from the event. (Readers at NetVUE member institutions can view recordings and presentations from the conference by following the links in this post and signing in to the NetVUE Online Community.)

Scenes from the 2026 NetVUE conference, including keynote speakers, Norman Wirzba (bottom left) and Almeda M. Wright (top right).
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Vocation and Pedagogy II: Managing Cognitive Load

The author reflects on their early teaching experiences, highlighting microaggressions and their impact on both faculty and students. They emphasize the importance of fostering a sense of belonging for effective learning, linking it to cognitive load theory. By implementing strategies to reduce cognitive load, educators can enhance students’ engagement and vocational development.

I still remember the day that a promising student from my biochemistry class stopped by my office to tell me she didn’t think she wanted to be a science professor anymore. She had watched me navigate interactions with disrespectful students and noticed in other classes that some students treated their male professors differently. She worried that she would not be able to manage situations where students questioned her credibility because of her gender. In her own work, she sometimes struggled to focus on content and hesitated to speak up in the classroom, anxious that someone would challenge her as they sometimes did me and that she wouldn’t know what to do. The exclusion that she observed and experienced shaped what she imagined as possible for her future; it also affected her learning.

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While it might be tempting to dismiss this student as an anomaly, experiences like this are all too common for many students. Students bring many different stories into the classroom with them, and interactions they observe can confirm their beliefs or fears about themselves and their place in an educational setting. Belonging is an essential pre-condition for vocational discernment and for learning. Students need to feel safe and to experience belonging to be able to respond to our invitations to explore their vocations and imagine their futures. Research shows that a lack of belonging—which can include experiencing or witnessing microaggressions—reduces a student’s capacity to learn.

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Connecting Calling to the Dignity of Labor

The author reflects on students’ struggles with vocation and purpose, noting how traditional vocational frameworks can induce anxiety instead of inspiration. He highlights misconceptions regarding identity and achievements, emphasizing the need to evaluate vocational exploration in relation to the dignity of all labor. The series aims to confront these issues and promote a more conscientious vocational discernment for our students.

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

“Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing?” 

Recently, I met with a group of students who were articulating the kind of sincere desires we so often hear in vocational work. One of the great joys in this kind of work with my students—which I’m sure is true for many of us—is accompanying them as they wrestle with these big questions of meaning and purpose. 

At the same time, those questions often come at us like a double-edged sword, because students are not always asking them from a place of deep joy. Frederick Buechner’s classic formulation of vocation, where God calls a person to “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” is inspirational, but it can also induce anxiety. And the students with whom I recently met were asking questions from that place. Instead of being inspired, they were worried that they were somehow getting it wrong. To them, vocation feels hidden and so morally urgent that missing or misunderstanding a calling is tantamount to sin or vice. It seems to me that if the formation programs I lead create angst in my students, I might be doing something wrong. 

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The Fluidity of Vocational Discernment

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A version of this post was delivered at Wisconsin Lutheran College’s winter commencement this past December, where Paul marked his retirement and celebrated more than 25 years working in higher education.

Among the foundational tenets of vocational discernment, here are two: our vocations are dynamic, and our vocations are ambiguous. For many, the inverse of these principles can also be true, shaping our impulses to think of discernment as being fixed or final. If we think about vocation in these terms, we start making assumptions that are misguided and possibly damaging, such as, discernment happens only once. If we think about discernment as a singular event, we put ourselves under a lot of pressure to get our calling right, perfectly right.

But if we think more accurately about the dynamic nature of vocational discernment, then we ought to keep in mind its fluid quality. If we picture discernment as a substance, then we see that it is amorphous and pliable, depending on the shape of the life that contains it.

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The Craft of Teaching (and Learning): Carlo Rotella

The latest episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings features Carlo Rotella, a writer and professor at Boston College. His book, What Can I Get Out of This?, explores teaching undergraduates and emphasizes meaningful engagement in the classroom. Rotella advocates for seeing education as a practice requiring persistence and presence, underscoring its relevance beyond mere career preparation.

Carlo Rotella

NetVUE’s podcast Callings has released a new episode, which features an interview with Carlo Rotella, an award-winning writer and professor of American Studies, English, and journalism at Boston College. His most recent book, What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics gets at the heart of what it means to teach and to learn together with undergraduate students today. Carlo has been a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine since 2007. His work has appeared in collections like The Best American Essays, as well as The New Yorker, Harper’s, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Slate, and various scholarly periodicals. Recurring subjects in his writing are cities and city life, boxing, music, crime, basketball, neighborhoods, and how people get good at things. He is co-editor and founder of the University of Chicago Press’s Chicago Visions and Revisions book series.

As his career and his most recent book illustrates, Carlo is interested in the nuts and bolts of teaching—what he considers its craft and the ways we can build classroom experiences that help our students make meaning. The book follows the experience of a single cohort of students in a required introductory literature course, most of whom are not English majors. In it, Rotella tells the story of what happens when students practice discussing ideas and readings with each other over a semester and then follows up with them a few years later, revealing that the course’s impact yielded an impactful return on investment in one’s education and life. As he describes it, one of the things it explores is “how to be a student, how to do college,” helping educators better understand how our students experience and live out their vocations as students.

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Vocation is for Everyone: Becoming People of Hope

At the NetVUE conference in March, participants explored the theme of hope within vocational education, and this post reflects on how the conference provided opportunities to cultivate hope, even in moments of despair over issues like AI’s impact on higher education. Conversations reinforced the importance of human reflection in vocational discernment. A notable discussion with Patrick, a car service owner, illustrated the breadth of vocational understanding, highlighting that vocation is essential for everyone.

close up of a card with the word hope lying on a tree
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Vocation is a practice of hope. I recently attended the 2026 NetVUE Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, right on the heels of a communication conference. I realized quickly that I was having conversations at NetVUE about the same topics I had just discussed with my communication colleagues, but the tenor of the conversations were strikingly different. At NetVUE, the prevailing sentiment about circumstances in undergraduate education was that of hope.

I don’t mean that people were ignorant of the headwinds facing our institutions; I mean that the people I conversed with agreed that the work we do matters and is worth doing, despite the challenges we face. Indeed, hope was a fitting theme for the conference. It reinforced the belief that we can—as a group of networked colleagues—pursue a shared vision of shaping our students through sustained action to be people of hope. What was reinforced for me at the conference was that vocational education is one practice of hope.

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