Tag: conflicted callings

Teaching King Lear: Choosing the Path of Most Resistance

This post on Vocation Matters takes up the question of how to help students navigate their multiple callings in multiple communities. They often don’t have experience working through this tension, which motivates the author to teach King Lear. When reading this play, students confront the tragic end of Cordelia, a character who is punished for her virtues rather than rewarded for them. Her death illustrates how living vocationally can often bring sacrifice and suffering. Teaching this Shakespearean play can help students grapple with narratives that disrupt their expectations and mature vocationally.

The third post in a series on Shakespeare, pedagogy, and the power of literature to help us navigate ambiguity.

It’s a regular occurrence, especially among students who are overcommitted and socially invested. They request an extension for what they assure me is a really good reason.

a woman holding a patient s hand
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One student can’t finish her paper on time because her roommate is in the hospital, and she had to spend all night there, keeping watch over her friend.

Another asks for a make-up quiz because his girlfriend was, in his words, “having a rough time” and “needed to talk.”

I once had a student provide documentation that the geriatric dog she was pet-sitting had died and she had to handle the logistics.

If we assume (perhaps sometimes too generously) that these stories are true, then the students are right: They do have a very good reason. And they are fairly confident that if they just explain the context clearly enough, then I—their kind, nurturing, female professor—will show mercy. Because if they “had to” or “needed to” do something else truly meaningful, then the academic impact should surely be mitigated.

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Good Enough Faithfulness

This post highlights the pressure to achieve in higher education and offers an alternative to this mindset. It emphasizes the importance of embracing life’s messiness and acknowledging conflicting callings. Instead of striving for perfection, it suggests fostering gratitude and recognizing “good enough” actions to cultivate a meaningful vocation in different life seasons.

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

Humble callings upon an early rise, easy to cast aside.
The glory in a student’s struggle—how to uniquely guide?
A thoughtful intellectual, with time and curiosity to give,
An ideal image that often collides with how most of us actually live.
The simple truth is our lives are full, with care and needs each day.
How easy to critique, dismiss, and belittle the impact of our way.
The calling is not perfection and meeting every need,
The calling is rhythm, reflection, and goodness of the deed.

—Carrie Caudill

Achievement and optimization mindsets have become deeply ingrained in the culture of higher education. My own internal script often demands, “Go, go, go! Grade those papers. Make this class content more interactive. Don’t forget about applying for that grant proposal. Oh, and look on Amazon—your son needs a new lunch box. Don’t forget to respond to the Meal Train request, and the committee meeting is in 15 minutes, so you can do something in the 13 minutes before you log on to Teams. Go!”

scattered papers and broken pencils
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Continue reading “Good Enough Faithfulness”