NetVUE’s podcast Callings has concluded its fifth season with the release of its annual bonus “Highlights” episode. It features clips from this season’s interviews, offering advice to undergraduate students on how they might think about vocation and the search for purpose and meaning in their lives. These excerpts are not only gems in their own right—representing the most interesting insights from the season—but they also provide listeners brief reflections that might be useful for classroom activities or points of departure for writing or discussion in their work with undergraduate students.
The highlights in this episode explore a range of themes, from encouraging us all to embrace the non-linear and unpredictable nature of vocation, as well as saying yes to the unforeseen opportunities that present themselves over the course of our lives. Guests encourage students to situate their callings within the dynamic interplay between self and world, and even as students create a vision for their futures out of this tension, they might hold their plans loosely and explore the many dimensions of flourishing that their vocations might comprise. This season also created space to acknowledge the double-edged qualities to callings, affirming the challenges and hardship in our lives and worlds that shape our paths. At the same time, guests encouraged students not to give up hope and to work through these difficulties, learning how to navigate difference and disagreement with greater empathy and resilience.
This episode features John Inazu, Caryn Riswold, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Emmanuel Katongole, Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Mustafa Akyol, Abel Chávez, Kiran Singh Sirah, Jennifer Herdt, and Jason Blakely.
Click hereto listen to the fifth season’s bonus episode of highlights.
Geoffrey W. Bateman is the editor of Vocation Matters.