By Sophie Wink
In my 20 years, I have worked quite a few different kinds of jobs.
I’ve been a nanny and a consignment store clerk, a summer camp counselor and a tutor, an editor for a newspaper and an agricultural worker picking strawberries in the blistering July heat— you name it, I’ve dabbled.
These are the kinds of jobs that, for me at least, I would call work. I have taken memories and lessons from all of them, certainly—I now know how much I love working with children, I know the unique challenges of the retail industry, I am intimately familiar with the backbreaking work is that goes into harvesting every carton of strawberries and bag of zucchini in the supermarket.
But all these jobs have been some sort of means to an end. I picked them up to pay for a vacation or my groceries and I worked hard, but that work has a different meaning from vocation, something that I am moving toward as I approach my college graduation.
Vocation, to me, means something very different. A vocation is not just a job, nor is it even just a career. To me, the word vocation is linked with the word passion. A vocation is not just something that you do because you have to do it, but rather something that you do because you feel a calling to it.
“A Jesuit education uniquely positions students to pursue a vocation rather than just a job.”
As Jesuit educated students, we’re educated in a way that emphasizes humanity above all else. Whether you study biology or history, engineering or business, you’re reminded again and again that whatever you do should be done in pursuit of passion and vocation—an education of the mind, body, and soul requires a person to look beyond a job to find a vocation. For Jesuit-educated students especially, I think that this often leads us to work that exists in service of others, that fills the soul by sharing knowledge, wealth, and above all love through a vocation that our own unique gifts make us especially suited for.
Although I have yet to leave the bubble of university life in search of my career, it is already abundantly clear to me that this will not always be easy. Today’s world can often feel like a top-speed race to the finish line, a mission to make the most money or be the most.
In families, the world of higher education, and social circles, there is certainly a great deal of pressure for young people to chase the careers that will make them the wealthiest or position them the highest in society. These pushes are generally well-intentioned: In a world where money does, unfortunately, often mean happiness, students’ loved ones want them to be comfortable and successful—and students want that for themselves, too.
But I don’t believe that the pursuit of success means abandonment of the pursuit of caring for the whole person or the pursuit of vocation. In fact, maybe I’m an optimist, but I think that the pursuit of vocation has tremendous potential to enhance the pursuit of success. The most important thing that I try to remind myself of is that by pursuing what I am passionate about and what fills my soul, I will find success. I like to think that the people who are the most successful are the ones who pursue their passions because for them, they are not just working. They pour everything that they have into their vocation because it holds deep meaning. Sure, a job that aligns with my passions will probably still be hard. I’m under no illusions that whatever career I choose will be easy just because I love my work.
The difference, though, is that a vocation backed by passion is free from the soul-sucking monotony of a job that is nothing more than a job. If you love what you do and you love why you do it, you can wake up each morning and rest your head each night secure in the knowledge that you, through your vocation, are changing the world for the better.
I wonder what would happen if, instead of looking at success in the way that we have been conditioned to look at it—as defined by money and power—we make a shift toward defining it by the passion that defines vocation. If we go out into the world and pursue the things that fulfill our hearts and minds, won’t we be successful? If we can come home every night content with the fact that what we spent our day doing has made the world a better place, isn’t that an even higher form of accomplishment? And on top of all of that, I tend to believe that if one pursues that higher, value-driven form of success, more traditional forms of success are bound to come naturally.
What will the pursuit of passion and vocation look like for these Santa Clara University graduates? Photo courtesy of Santa Clara University.
Twenty years from now, I hope that I (and you) can wake up in the morning and know that the work we are doing is making a difference because I have spent my energy on something that I love, something that nourishes mind, body, and soul and extends its goodness into the world around me. So, as we all get ready to leave behind the safety of college and brave a world of fear, doubt, and uncertainty, here’s what I have to say: Chase your passion and the rest will follow.
Sophie Wink is a history major and a member of the Class of 2022 at Santa Clara University.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Irham Bahtiar via Unsplash.