Dear Class of 2015,
Next month marks the end of the
first half of your Trinity experience, a time when the relationship between
your interests and purpose should begin to come into sharper focus. If you
haven’t yet declared a major, it will soon be time to do so. Remember, you do
not need to know what you will do for a living with a particular major in order
to have a full, rich life and career. Some of the most interesting and
successful public intellectuals, television news personalities, national parks
protectors, biochemists, brain surgeons, novelists, playwrights, film
directors, inventors, engineers, architects, senators, property lawyers,
psychoanalysts, museum curators, entrepreneurs, rabbis, preachers, parents,
friends, teachers, professors, mobile app developers, painters, explorers, and
consultants found their calling not through programs that trained them to do
specific jobs but through majors that inspired them to ask big questions about
the meaning and makeup of life. They majored in disciplines that forced them to
understand the world deeply and to try out different versions of themselves, to
rehearse their role in creating the world or in helping to make it a better
place.
You do not need to know exactly
how you will use your major yet, but you do need to think seriously about what
you want to do after college. It is time for you to do internships, meet
alumni, and figure out how different people have made it from college toward
their fulfilling careers and lifestyles. The end of your time at Trinity will
happen faster than you know, and the last two years will feel much faster than
the first two. What is next? What will you do with your one life? What
endeavors, questions, and pursuits are worthy of your life’s work?
Frederick Buechner, the American
writer and theologian, once famously described your “calling” in life as “the
place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” What is your
“deep gladness” -- that joy rooted in the fundamental essence of your being?
And what does the world deeply hunger for? Where do these two things meet?
Everyone will have a different unique answer, but the question is universal.
How do you ask it? You need time alone, quiet, to distinguish between pleasure
and joy, between economic demand and profound need, between anxiety and
purpose. You also need to listen to those who know you best, your closest
mentors, family, and friends -- those who sometimes know you better than you
know yourself. Finally, you have to try yourself out, to explore, to figure out
what careers exist -- or could -- in the overlapping area of your passions,
gifts, and the world’s need.
This is an exciting and promising
time. Take it seriously. Declaring a major is a significant milestone to help
you to step up into a purposeful, meaningful life.
Kyle Gillette
Class Marshal
