Without school to occupy your thoughts, you may find that your magnificent minds are being directed inwards-and that’s unsettling. Contemplating your Venetian blinds easily loses your interest, and you refuse to watch another “reality” show in which people are measured according to their ability to sing, dance, cook, outwit, charm Mr. Trump, or be funny. Every day it seems yet another Idol-winning Taylor Hicks rejoices in the reward of following their passion and finding their “vocation” in life.
Meanwhile here you sit, bored, with nothing to think about except yourself. Then suddenly you have a Bodhi tree-ish moment. That’s right, you come to the realization that you have not found your passion-if you had, that’s what you’d be doing right this minute! So logically, you decide to find this vocation.
To search for your vocation is to assume that you do indeed have one, or to at least acquiesce to believe in such a thing for fear of otherwise falling into nihilistic despair. As Nietzsche stated so well, “He who has a why to live for, can bear with almost any how.” In this sense the idea of vocation can be seen as providing a meaning, a goal around which you choose to structure the otherwise disparate activities you call life.
The issue of discerning personal meaning or purpose is one that may be especially poignant for this year’s graduating students, but it can apply to anyone. Looking back on your time at U of T, have you been pursuing your degree for the sake of getting an education in itself, or is the piece of paper merely a tool put toward attaining some professional goal? Can one even connect their studies with a vocation? Looking at your transcript, you may want to ask yourself: is ancient astronomy my purpose? I loved that class, but I don’t think anyone wants to believe in the existence of aether anymore. Sigh. I’ll leave “ancient astronomer” in the “maybe” pile.
Trying to “do something” with my undergraduate education is a thorny issue. After all, I am a humanities student, and I think my fellow students can readily empathize with the issue of the applicability of the degree to anything beyond itself. My last three years have been spent pursuing highly impractical lines of thought and courses of study, but I’ve really enjoyed most of what I’ve taken. And yet I’ll never forget my mother’s reaction to some of the courses I took last year: “Why would anyone want to learn about that?” Ouch.
Memories like this, coupled with visions of a happy Taylor Hicks, made me look in desperation for vocational prospects. Of course, you can go to the career center to take career aptitude tests if that suits your fancy, but I decided to see what I could find out all by my lonesome on the internet. I googled a lot. But most tests require credit cards, since they sure ain’t free. So I thought, what can a poor, directionless gal find to help her in her quest?
Now if you thought that I would be outlining actual websites where you could go to speculate on your unique vocation, whether it be related to stage set design or dental hygienist work (some of my prospective career paths), then you are sadly mistaken, my friend. The nature of the term “vocation” is something inherently personal and unique, something which need not be one thing, and certainly not a profession.
My point is that these tests can be really absurd. If you do fall into a Taylor Hicks-induced nihilism this summer, just be careful what you look for on Google to soothe your frayed, directionless nerves. The last thing you are likely to find is your vocation. Perhaps your vocation, if you absolutely have to have one, is something which must be defined and not found, least of all with the help of a powerful search engine. I suggest you do the defining.
