Santa Clara University

Career Corner

Heeding your calling

Kathy Potter

Recently, a 2003 SCU graduate came into my office, stretched out his long legs in an effort to seem relaxed, and stated, "I just graduated with a degree in engineering and I don't want to do engineering!" That same week, another graduate, a female alum of 15 years, in professional business attire and "appropriate" upright posture and composed smile, stated, "I have been in my line of work for a long time, and I am desperate to make a change." Two unique people and situations but with a similar theme: "I want to explore something different in my career but I don't know where to start."

Does this sound familiar? Differences in age, number of years in a job, gender, race, or other distinctions do not seem to matter when a person is struggling with the question of meaning in work. We have distinct needs and desires at different life stages, but the yearning for finding our "calling" or vocation, as many writers refer to this inner drive, is always present, if we will only pay attention.

In their recent book, Whistle While You Work: Heeding Your Life's Calling, authors Richard Leider and David Shapiro contend that the "call" to a particular way of work fulfills four essential needs. Although we may find it more difficult to discover these needs when we're just starting our career journey or when we have been doing the same work for many years, we need to take time to consider if we have lost our way.

Leider and Shapiro's first need can be fulfilled by paying attention to what beckons us. We feel as if we are responding to something that "just feels right," even if we don't know why. For more experienced folks, that might be a sense of receiving guidance from something larger than ourselves.

The second need is the desire to feel we make a difference in the world. We can often feel this pull early in our lives: Think of the youngster who likes finding ways to collect money or goods for disadvantaged people, or the young businessperson who is constantly creating new ventures with schoolmates.

The third need is similar to Abraham Maslow's "self actualization" stage in his hierarchy of needs, the desire to be "all we can be" and to maximize our potential. The effort to reveal our true selves to the world is a constant drive, even when thwarted by circumstances and life's inevitable struggles.

Finally, our life's calling eventually fulfills our need to leave a legacy. As Leider and Shapiro state, a calling connects us "to our communities, to ourselves, and to our own conception of life's spiritual center." Although we may often be confused about the "what" and "how" of our calling, at the end of our lives we want to feel we have made a difference in someone's life or the life of the community. Perhaps poet T.S. Eliot captures the essence of this lifelong search for our calling when he writes, "We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time."

Kathy Potter is assistant director of SCU's Career Center. She can be reached by phone at 408-554-4859 or by e-mail at kpotter@scu.edu.