pandemic

Vocational Discernment as a Wellness Tool

Rachel F. Pickett webinar ,

Campus life is gradually beginning to return to a new normal after two years of pandemic learning. Students are back in classrooms, and co-curricular activities are in full swing. However, there is still much healing and readjustment to do since the psychological impact of the COVID19 pandemic will be with us for years to come.

To address this new normal, NetVUE’s Fall 2022 Webinar focused on “Vocational Discernment as a Wellness Tool.” Exploring meaning and purpose can be a creative and effective way to integrate well-being practices on campus. A recent study, for example, indicates that exploring meaning and purpose for one’s life may lead to higher levels of life satisfaction, positive coping skills, and greater psychological health. The webinar on October 26 featured Elizabeth Kubek (below left) and Debra Minsky-Kelly (below right) and addressed the topic of integrating vocation as a wellness strategy in our work with students.

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“Quiet Quitting” and Vocation

Joanne E. Myers Uncategorized , ,

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted our perspective on a lot of things, not least of which may be our relationship with our work and workplace—and hence our sense of vocation and how we communicate it to our students. Even just two years out, I’m startled by memories of things most of us did to make pandemic learning successful: the late-night sessions making Screencast-o-Matic videos, the “check-ins,” the on-the-fly attempts to share audio via Zoom without creating a cringe-worthy feedback loop in the physical classroom. Even if those memories seem distant, though, I—and I’m guessing I’m not alone—still feel bruised by the demands of the last few years. Based on the number of articles about “quiet quitting” that have recently cropped up in my news feed (perfectly timed to coincide with the start of classes), we are only now gaining some clarity about the pandemic’s rippling effects.

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A fire that burns but does not burn us out

Craig E. Mattson Uncategorized , , ,

Remember that booth from the Peanuts cartoons where Lucy used to offer Charlie Brown psychiatric care for five cents? That’s roughly where Moses is halfway through the Book of Exodus, sitting in his wilderness booth, chin in hand, the leader of a newly formed nation of ex-slaves spending his days fielding endless disputes.

It does make you wonder what quarrels the Israelites raised in the wilderness. How do you make a class action lawsuit about manna? How do you have a meaningful dispute about sandals that never wear out?

But humans gotta human. And I confess that on most days in 2022, I would gladly take a number and stand in line for some Mosaic adjudication.

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What Is Our Work Now?

Julia L Fogg Uncategorized , , ,

Our Religion department chair always begins meetings with a round of check-ins. The check-in question changes, but the invitation to share from something professional or personal is always there. This feels right—perhaps because the members of our department have worked together for over a decade. Or maybe because we know intimately how twined and tangled the personal and the professional are for those of us who out live our teaching vocation.

This week, a department member opened our check-in saying, “I’m having a rough day, but I’m doing my best in this moment to be present to the work.” Before I could think, I blurted out, “I’m also having a rough day, but I’m not sure what our work is now.”

On the surface, my comment made no sense. The agenda for the department meeting was clear: discuss core curriculum revisions, construct a shared assignment on “identity” for all first year religion and theology classes, and set hiring priorities for the fall (we lost three faculty this academic year). But eight weeks into the semester, five semesters into the pandemic, and two plus years into educational upheaval, my confusion was real.

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“Good enough” pedagogy: the importance of interpersonal connections

Amy Santas Reflection exercises , ,

In Spring 2020, I piloted vocational exploration exercises in a 300-level biology course. Through the difficult journey of that year, I learned that vocational exploration served as medicine for a myriad of woes. Guiding students to explore their purpose supported students’ unmet deep needs. 

According to the 2020 Faculty Watch Report, 65% of faculty members surveyed indicated that pandemic-influenced course structure changes had a negative impact on educational quality. Yet, seven in ten faculty believe that hybrid or flex models will continue. I am sure this does not come as a surprise given the Spring 2020 mass shift to remote teaching and learning. This was new territory for which we had little or no time to develop novel pedagogy. Many of us found ourselves in a place where we were delivering what we were able to provide—a “good enough” pedagogy. Did we discover some important components to retain? Did we discover critical elements that had not been as obvious in our previous offerings—either important support structures or course elements that need to be fixed?

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Getting Out of the Way

Catherine Knott Uncategorized , ,

I have been taking classical voice lessons for several years now, a training I underwent as a teenager and returned to as a thirtysomething. In 2015 when I met my new vocal coach, I brought along with me my dog-eared copy of Schirmer’s 24 Great Italian Songs and Arias, Soprano Edition. After warming up, I chose a piece that I was once assigned in 1995, to see how I would fare 20 years later. 

I was comfortable with the swift melismas that hid the higher notes from my anxious eyes, but when I was asked to hold a high G for a whole measure, I suddenly tightened. On my end, I decided I needed to gird my loins, summon my strength, and force that note out into the sanctuary with every muscle in my body. 

“Sounds like a Hail Mary,” my teacher suggested, gently noting that I sounded a bit like a train whistle. “The trick is to get out of the way—you don’t have to push the sound. It’s like grace—it comes on its own.” 

I should have known that signing on with an Episcopalian for voice lessons would also mean spiritual direction, because there was profundity in his advice to “get out of the way.” 

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A Call for Care in the Academy

Courtney Dorroll Uncategorized , ,

As self-reports of anxiety and depression are on the rise for our students and suicides continue to impact small and large college campuses alike, we have hit a moment of reckoning: how mental health is viewed, represented, and accepted in the academy. Now, in the midst of a pandemic, administrators, staff, professors, and students are being asked to stretch themselves in new and inventive ways. Uncertainty surrounds us all. The silver lining might be officially recognizing and naming the need to care for ourselves.  

Self-Care: What it is and why you should do it.

As we are being asked to radically accept this new world order of teaching, whether it be over Zoom or behind glass shields in masks, we too must come to terms with the need to stop and care for ourselves. How often have you viewed caring for yourself as a form of professional development? Therapy can be a tool for self-care and an official way to care for yourself. A yoga app that you use at your leisure or a mindful meditation can be your self-care ritual. Self-care can be focusing for 5 minutes on your breathing—just thinking intentionally about your breath in and your breath out. I am extending the invitation to you all to add a small shift in your day, of either extending your care rituals or starting a care ritual (however long or involved) as a way to sustain us on this voyage of teaching and learning amidst a global pandemic. 

If I do not provide deep moments of care for myself, I won’t be able to extend that care to my students. Creating a culture of care for myself also allows me to model that care to my students and encourage them to take time for care for themselves. I have adopted a form of self-care pedagogy where I define, normalize and institutionalize self-care in my classroom. I insert self-care days, so students see that it is as important as the content I am teaching them. We talk of self-care as a form of ritual and practice, a way to center ourselves for the learning before us and to rejuvenate from the learning behind us.  

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Staying Home with Jane Austen

Bridget Draxler Texts for discussion , ,

Empathy is a curious thing. As a scholar of historical literature, I often point to it as a justification for the existence of my field. Studying Jane Austen’s novels is hardly a practical area of study, even in the best of times, and can seem downright frivolous in a year marked by the murder of George Floyd, a global pandemic, and an historic election. But literature also cultivates, in elusive and remarkable ways, the kind of empathy our world so deeply needs right now. 

Let me share one example. This spring, I was scheduled to lead a Jane Austen Book Club at our local public library. With Kate Hamill’s new stage adaptation of Emma scheduled for its world premiere at the Guthrie Theater in April, and a new film adaptation also set for release this spring, we planned group outings to see both following weekly discussions on each volume of Austen’s novel. The spirited group of mostly retirees—some of whom collectively researched forgotten women in history together to satiate their curiosity between book clubs—adapted to the online discussions gracefully. I pulled out my tried-and-true discussion guides and thought only of the change in style of our conversation, not anticipating one of substance. But for me, after reading this book many times and settling into an easy familiarity with it, Emma suddenly felt new again. 

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Discontinued: Our Fragile Vocations

lwalterskramer Uncategorized , ,

In this time of faculty and staff lay-offs, how can vocation help us?

These are difficult days at my college. Twenty-four staff members lost their jobs in July.  Faculty members will soon learn if their positions will be cut. Many of us are demoralized and frightened. My colleagues and I are not alone. By early July, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s data revealed that 224 institutions had to lay off, furlough, or not renew contracts due to Covid-19. Losing a job is enough reason for anguish but there is likely another reason for their despair—a possible future without researching and teaching. Take, for example, Mark Lucas, a professor of physics at Ohio University who lost the position he held for 21 years. He states, “My gut says there are a number of people like me out there, and the positions are dwindling… It pains me to realize that I might not be teaching anymore.” How institutions acknowledge the impact of job loss on an individual’s vocational narrative and how (or if) institutions attend to the vocational crises amongst its members speaks to the institution’s ethos as well as its own calling.  

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Pandemic reflection on a pin oak tree

P R Burmeister Uncategorized , , ,

The requirement to work and teach from home this spring afforded me close observations of goings-on in my small back yard. The daily experiences of watching nature in the yard during this time of pandemic disruption provided quiet means to think about what we can and cannot control in our lives of vocation. Another spring of harsh weather caused me to ponder whether the life of a little pin oak tree might serve as an image of vocation.

Spring 2020 has not been kind to the young pin oak tree I planted more than three years ago. One morning in March, about the time I started working from home, several birds nipped off almost all of the branch tips. I watched them do this, in a matter of minutes, and refrained from intervening because I wasn’t certain whether or not the incident was naturally beneficial to the tree. Almost two months later, in early May, a hard, overnight frost killed all of the tree’s emerging leaves. This particular tree has survived much in its short life.

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