“What am I going to do with my life? What should I major in? Should I focus on money or meaning-are they mutually exclusive for me? How can I be a “good” Catholic, Hindu, Baptist, Muslim ... and do the kind of work that I want to do without feeling compromised? So many crucial questions in our life, so little time to think about them.
The Sophomore Retreat sponsored by the Lilly Project, along with Career Development Center and Internship Office, offered us a chance to explore these questions in depth. Puzzled, captivated, and a bit overwhelmed by the importance of these questions, we joined six other Mac sophomores at the retreat.
9:00 a.m. on January 23 found us all sitting in the Chapel basement, where the day began with an extraordinary talk from Professor Sarah West. It was interesting to hear Sarah talk about her life as a sophomore at Macalester and fascinating to learn how she ended up becoming an economics professor here-her “dream-job”-after getting off to a shaky start. Her inspirational talk gave us some reassurance that the questions we were facing about work, ethics and vocation had answers after all.
Intrigued by Sarah’s talk and with a thirst for answers, we set out with two seniors, Chaplain Lucy Forster-Smith, Denise Ward from CDC, and Paul Schadewald from CSO, on the hour-long drive to the Mt. Olivet Retreat Center. After checking into our rooms, which were better than we had expected, and having a strange lunch of salad and omelets, we gathered for a reflective discussion, based on two articles, Breaking the Job Lock by Andrew Kimbrell and Are You Deciding on Purpose? by Allan Webber. Keynote speaker Julie Neraas’s, interactive session followed.
Our discussion covered lots of ground and some deep issues surfaced. “If your life could be an answer to a question, what might that question be?” Participants came up with diverse responses, and it was helpful to reflect upon what might be truly inside us. To be honest, the idea that we might find our true self was scary at first; we were fearful of diving into a world, which deep down we craved, but were not quite ready for.
After a intense day of reflection, activities, and both physical and mental traveling, it was time for a break. The film October Sky fit the mood and was also entertaining. A very busy but meaningful day ended, and we all agreed that at least at that point our “true calling” was for a good night’s sleep.
The next morning would bring more intense activities. The first, titled “Defining the Moments in Your Life,” helped us reflect upon our values, passions, gifts and actions. We referred to Parker Palmer’s Let your Life Speak, an eloquently written book, titled with a Quaker admonition, which is definitely a must-read for anyone trying to find his or her true calling.
Before we started our next activity, a light-hearted Jeopardy-like game in which Jason Schlude proved that he will make a brilliant TV show host, the two of us decided to take a walk in the woods. Following the snowy trail, we chatted, looked at footmarks, and watched some beautiful deer. Suddenly we realized that we were lost-as in L O S T! After a few panicky but funny moments, we managed to find our way back-thanks to Bibek’s navigation and Andra’s confidence. Thus, we spent a bit more time finding out what is important for each of us than initially predicted. Hurray for adventure!
During the last event, Laura Smidzik from the Internship Office outlined some steps for translating our newly-found knowledge about ourselves into action and told us a lot about the resources at Macalester. Soon, it was farewell time-back to another level of reality, back to the intense life at Mac. But we returned with a better sense of where we stand. The big picture of our lives might never be clear enough, but one theme has stayed with us. If we learned one thing, it was to look for those moments in life when we could say, “I had never looked harder at the world.”
