Back to School With Purpose

Last updated on: August 20, 2015 at 12:30 pm by Caryn Riswold

Back to School With Purpose 2015-08-20T12:30:04-06:00 Caryn Riswold

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This will be the first fall since I was three years old that I will not be a student or be starting school. I have the great gift of being on sabbatical from teaching this coming academic year, with time for writing, reading, speaking, travelling, and so many other things.

Because of that, I spent parts of the past two weeks leading a workshop on vocation for staff and faculty at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as a result of their and my association with the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education. As they get ready to head back to school, along with many others, they are beginning a year of discussing how to better work with students who are figuring out what it means to live a life of meaning and purpose.

One of the resources I use when leading discussions like this is a short video on vocation developed by The Fund for Theological Education. Here it is:

I use it despite the fact that it explicitly references God and Jesus. This might seem like a strange disclaimer from one who engages the Christian tradition and its theological framework regularly, but it is important. Yes, definitions and discussions of vocation are inherently embedded in the western Christian tradition. Yet, Christians aren’t the only ones who are called by God. Religious people aren’t the only ones who seek to match the world’s needs with their own passions and skills.

I find useful the moment in the short video where it indicates that we can be and are called by the world, including the community and our neighbors. In fact, I think this is where the “feminism” part of my work and identity comes from. It comes from being enmeshed in the world, seeing certain social inequities, and being committed to responding to and transforming them.

One of the questions that we return to in conversations around vocation is this: What does a meaningful life look like? What might it mean for me? For you? For the student in the classroom? For the advisee seeking direction? For your neighbor?

For all, what seems to matter is a commitment to the conversation and the freedom to explore the possibilities. Education involves learning about the world and it necessarily means learning about oneself.

And so, in this back-to-school season, find some new ways to engage with the people in your life who are learning and discerning. That might be in a classroom, around a kitchen table, or over the backyard fence.

Go back to school with purpose!

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