Tag: junior year

The Meaning of Dinosaurs: Embedding Vocation in the Major

This project aims to fill the gaps between introductory vocation lessons in the first-year seminar and culminating activities in the senior capstone to offer students the chance to make connections and discern vocation after declaring a major—typically in sophomore- and junior-level courses such as historical methods.

Major Decisions, Major Discoveries: Exploring Vocation in the Undergraduate Years, a series of posts from Nebraska Wesleyan University about helping students develop meaning and purpose as part of their major coursework 

For Joel, it started with dinosaurs. Reading about them, collecting them as toys, and drawing them stand out among his childhood memories. He filled his wandering map with meaningful moments, including the time a teacher gave him a fossil. Ultimately, a circuitous line connecting one history-related experience after another emerged. As he took stock of 20 years of memories, colorfully scattered across a poster board, he saw a pervasive lifetime love of history that inadvertently led him to his undergraduate major.

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