Author: david.youland

Coddiwompling: Meandering with Purpose

The post discusses the concept of “coddiwompling,” representing the unpredictable and meandering journey of vocation and career. It emphasizes embracing unexpected detours, learning from failures, and recognizing that personal growth often arises from these challenges. The author encourages students to navigate their paths purposefully, adapting to life’s uncertainties.

As I concluded my last post, I left readers with a word that I think best describes my thinking about vocation, calling, and career—coddiwompling. Coddiwompling is an English slang term loosely defined as meandering in a purposeful manner toward a vague destination. In this post, the final one in my series, I will use this term to explore the circuitous vocational journey that many of us find ourselves on and its implications for our students.

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The Myth of the Linear Career

The post highlights the importance of guiding students in their career paths, emphasizing ongoing reflection and exploration instead of adhering to common, linear trajectories. It illustrates various career stages and encourages openness to non-linear paths, underscoring the fluidity of modern careers. Future posts will discuss the concept of “coddiwompling” as a purposeful journey.

When I ask former students who have recently graduated how they embarked on their current career path, the answers are often strikingly similar: “I’m not sure,” they often say, “it just happened.” They choose jobs because they are available and seem acceptable at the time. They sometimes also admit, “My parents told me this was a good field to work in.” As a result, these students have begun their professional lives in careers that lack purpose and fulfillment, yet they still expect upward mobility and ever-increasing success.

In my last post, I made a case for encouraging students to engage in deep vocational discernment and reflection as they embark on their careers, rather than succumbing to the most common paths students often take in this moment: accident or happenstance, apathy, and social pressure. To support this process, we need to encourage students to view vocational and career discernment as an ongoing, regular reflection and reassessment activity.

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Finding Your One Thing: Discernment in a World of Career Noise

Students often struggle to balance passion with practicality in career decisions, influenced by financial obligations and societal expectations. Many enter careers accidentally, through apathy, or via social pressure, leading to dissatisfaction. Encouraging thoughtful reflection on values and proactive choices can guide students toward fulfilling career paths aligned with their true vocations.

a woman with rope tied around her body
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

One of the challenges for our students in making vocational and career decisions is finding the appropriate balance between passion and practicality. While the pursuit of one’s passion is often considered the ideal, the realities of modern life—with its multitude of well-meaning voices, financial obligations, and family concerns—frequently necessitate more pragmatic choices. This tension creates a dynamic in which vocational aspirations and career decisions are continuously evolving and being reconciled.

Vocation often has spiritual and philosophical connotations. And even though we often use career interchangeably with vocation and calling, there are important distinctions between these words. Careers are frequently regarded as more pragmatic and of lesser importance, with the implication that vocation, and especially calling, hold greater depth. I would contend that one’s career also merits deep reflection and discernment. Today, a career is understood as the journey or path one takes in their professional life. While vocation speaks to the inner call, career offers a different context that includes steps taken to build one’s life’s work. Our careers, although distinct from our vocations, can be the means through which we express our vocations or callings. In this context, our careers should also be the result of deep thought and discernment.

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The Case for the Modern Polymath: Why a Broad Education Matters

Students will confront complex challenges like AI, climate change, and inequality. To tackle these “wicked” problems, they need polymathic thinking, which entails integrating knowledge across disciplines. Small liberal arts colleges can cultivate this mindset, fostering adaptability and diverse experiences, crucial for navigating a complicated world and achieving fulfilling careers.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Self-portrait (circa 1517-1518), Turin, Royal Library.

Students today will enter a world of unprecedented challenges that were unfathomable a generation ago. The problems our students will face include artificial intelligence, political divisiveness, climate change, access to healthcare, growing economic inequality, and countless other issues. Addressing these social and political issues will require our students to learn how to solve “wicked” problems that are complicated, incomplete, and interconnected—ones that require complex solutions. Polymathic thinking will be increasingly necessary for our students to navigate this new world successfully.  

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