Tag: transition

Understanding the Student-Athlete Transition: Opportunities for Vocational Conversation

This post discusses the challenges student-athletes face during the transition from sports to life after college, highlighting issues of identity loss, depression, and social disconnection. It advocates for supportive conversations about vocational paths and emphasizes the importance of understanding these unique challenges to help student-athletes navigate their new realities effectively.

The first post in series on vocation and student-athletes.

woman in blue and white basketball jersey holding brown basketball
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

In the third semester of my graduate studies, I realized it was not for me, and I needed to call home to discuss dropping out. It was the first time ever that I had not wanted to attend school; in fact, I had been looking forward to the focused coursework. I had always planned to go to graduate school, but what I couldn’t account for were my feelings of being lost and disconnected. I finished my bachelor’s in May and started graduate school in July, so there was little time to process my undergraduate experience. There was even less time to process the loss of my athletic career, something that had been a driving force in my life for a solid decade. I played three sports a year from the seventh grade until I graduated from college. My identity as an athlete was deeply ingrained in my mind—it was how I identified with the outside world and how the world acknowledged me. When I graduated, that part of me seemingly stopped, but I had no way to understand what was happening.

Continue reading “Understanding the Student-Athlete Transition: Opportunities for Vocational Conversation”

Becoming Big

As much as I had struggled before I joined the church, once I submitted my little life, I wanted it to count. I hadn’t yet given up on the dream of becoming big. – Shirley Showalter, Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World.

In her memoir Blush Shirley Showalter shares stories from her childhood, including how she negotiated the emphasis in her Mennonite community on being “plain” and the admonition against feeling “big.” In a new episode of the NetVUE podcast series, Callings, Shirley talked with us about writing the memoir and what that process taught her about narrative and story. She relays some of the twists and turns in her own life, including the call to the presidency of Goshen College. With a new book coming out next year on grandparenting, co-written with Marilyn McEntyre, Shirley also talks about what it means to embrace becoming an elder. When asked what advice she would give to young adults today, she warned against listening to pre-fabricated advice from others: “Your vocation to yourself and to your own spirit is your highest vocation.” 

Continue reading “Becoming Big”

Transitions: A Powerful Time for Vocational Reflection

RedChairs
Welcome to summer

For academics, every summer contains an “eek!” moment right around the fourth of July. Suddenly one realizes that there are only five or six weeks left until the first faculty meetings of the new academic year.

Wait, didn’t we just sit through that long commencement ceremony?

One of the aspects of a life lived in school, to borrow Jane Tompkin’s felicitous memoir title, is almost constant motion. We, and our students, go through a lot of transitions. Consider, for example, the four or five years of the average student’s life cycle in college:

  • Leaving home
  • Moving into a dorm room, perhaps sharing a room for the first time,
  • Food always available, even Captain Crunch
  • The girlfriend or boyfriend left behind
  • The new girlfriend(s) or boyfriend(s)
  • Summer jobs
  • Part-time jobs on campus
  • Family members who divorce or get sick or die
  • Internships and/or study abroad
  • More roommates/new housing every year
  • Choosing (and often changing) majors
  • Graduating
  • Job seeking/applying to graduate school

These are just the most common and most obvious changes students navigate. Continue reading “Transitions: A Powerful Time for Vocational Reflection”