Returning to Who We Are
Reflections from the Career Clarity Retreat
At the outset of the Winter quarter, a group of 24 students gathered for the Career Clarity Retreat in Menlo Park. This retreat, a collaboration between the Career Center and Campus Ministry, aimed to provide a space for students to not only reflect on their potential careers, but to expand their discernment beyond the specific jobs with which they may eventually be tasked.
Having hosted this retreat for several years now, I am often struck by the same quiet truth each time we gather: how much each person is carrying, how much is navigated privately, and how imperfect yet sincere our attempts are to locate meaning, to discover and become who we are. What begins, for many students, as a weekend focused on resumes, majors, internships, and post-graduate plans quickly reveals itself to be something deeper. Beneath the surface questions of where to apply, where to live, or what comes next, lie more fundamental ones: Who am I? What is my purpose? What is my place in this world?
Students often arrive at the retreat carrying a familiar mix of anticipation, anxiety, and pressure — emotions that can feel like an orchestral audition, with musicians simultaneously learning their instruments while being asked to perform. As the retreat unfolds, space is made to slow down, to listen, and to name what is stirring beneath the noise. These deeper questions, of course, cannot simply be answered; they must be lived into — cultivated in community through presence, accompaniment, and a willingness to hold reality as it is.
At the beginning of the retreat, I half-jokingly encourage retreatants to lower their expectations, acknowledging that while moments of clarity or epiphany are possible, they are not the aim. Neither are neat or definitive answers to our many complex and nuanced questions — especially over the course of 24 hours. Rather, the hope is to leave our space a pinch more compassionate and aware than before, a bit freer than yesterday, and more able to welcome reality with renewed hospitality toward ourselves and those around us.
By the end of the retreat, students often name a subtle but meaningful shift: a sense of relief, a deeper self-compassion, or the reassurance that they are not alone in their questions. While nothing is “solved,” many leave feeling more grounded, more honest, and more at home within themselves and their unfolding journeys.
St. Francis of Assisi was known to walk through his days simply asking himself, “Who am I?” In many ways, it is a question we all carry — consciously or not. As we engaged themes of vocation, career, and discernment through the stories present on this retreat, I was reminded of St. Francis and his persistent question. By retreat’s end, as with any retreat, we are invited not to summarize the transformation of any collective or individual experience, but rather, to trust in the small and humble ways in which we have been returned to ourselves– and to trust that this, always, is the invitation: returning to who we are.
Victor Lemus
Campus Minister, Community Justice Formation