how to write an vocation essay

Calling & Vocation (Overview)

Introduction

When Christians ask about vocation (or "calling"), we usually mean, “Is God calling me to a particular job, profession or type of work?” This is a significant question, because the work we do is important to God. If work is important, it makes sense to ask what work God wants us to do.

In the Bible, God does indeed call people—some people, at least—to particular work, and gives all people various kinds of guidance for their work. We will explore biblical accounts of these “calls” in depth. Although scripture seldom actually uses the word “call” to describe God's guidance to jobs, occupations, or tasks, these occurrences in the Bible do correspond to what we usually mean by a vocational “calling.” So, as a preliminary answer, we can say “yes,” God does lead people to particular jobs, occupations, and types of work. But in the Bible, the concept of calling goes deeper than any one aspect of life, such as work. God calls people to become united with himself in every aspect of life. This can only occur as a response to Christ’s call to follow him. The calling to follow Christ lies at the root of every other calling. It is important, however, not to confuse a calling to follow Christ with a calling to become a professional church worker. People in every walk of life are called to follow Christ with equal depth and commitment.

In this article, after exploring the call to follow Christ, we will explore the calling to particular work in light of many of the biblical passages related to calling. We will show how the cooperative work of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit guides and models our work.

Along the way, we will examine related topics such as:

how to discern God’s calling or guidance in the area of work
the community nature of calling
the calling to church vs. non-church work
callings to the creative and redemptive work of God beyond the paid workplace
the importance of how you work at whatever job you have, and
the ultimate freedom that Christians enjoy in their work.
Types of God’s Calling
The Call to Belong to Christ and Participate in His Redemptive Work in the World

In the Bible, the word “call” is used most often to refer to God's initiative to bring people to Christ and to participate in his redemptive work in the world. This sense of calling is especially prominent in the letters of Paul, whether or not the word “call” is actually used.

The calling to belong to Christ goes deeper than the kinds of workplace “calling” that are the main focus of this article. For this reason, it is important to start our exploration of calling with the call to follow Jesus. It is a call to a restored relationship with God and with other people and with the world around us. It encompasses all of a person’s being and doing. It reminds us that the call to a particular kind of work is secondary to the call to belong to Christ and to participate in his redemption of the world .

In particular, our work must be an integral part of our participation in Christ himself. His work of creation underlies the act of creativity and production in the universe (John 1:1-3). His work of redemption can occur in every workplace through justice, healing, reconciliation, compassion, kindness, humility and patience (Colossians 3:12). Christ’s redemptive work is not limited to evangelism , but encompasses everything necessary to make the world what God always intended it to be. This redemptive work occurs in harmony with the work of creation, production and sustenance that God delegated to humanity in the Garden of Eden . The Bible does not indicate that the work of redemption has superseded the work of creation. Both continue, and in general, Christians are commanded to participate in the work of both creation and redemption. [1]

The Universal Call to Work

Before we can discuss the possibility of God’s guidance to a particular kind of work, we must recognize both that God created people to work and that he commands people to work to the degree they are able. At the beginning of the Bible, God builds work into the essence of humanity. He creates people in his own image, and he himself is a worker . He puts Adam in the garden for the purpose of working it. Later, in various parts of scripture, God commands all people to work to the degree they are able. Work continues through to the very end of the Bible. There is work in the Garden of Eden, and there is work in the New Heaven/New Earth .

Based on these passages, we could say that everyone is “called” to work, as long as we recognize that in this sense “called” really means “created” and “commanded” to work. God created you as a worker, and he commands you to work, even if he doesn’t mail you a specific job offer. It can be difficult to discern the particular work God may be calling you to, but there can be no doubt that he made you as a worker and that he expects you to work, to the degree you are able.

Calling to Life, Not Only to Work

Although we are focusing on God’s call to work, work is only one element of life. God calls us to belong to Christ in every element of our lives.

Our jobs are not necessarily the most important aspect of our calling or our service in Christ’s work of redemption. First, we must remember that work is not limited to paid work. The work God leads us to may be unpaid work, such as raising children or caring for a disabled family member or tutoring students after school. Even if we are called to paid work, God probably doesn’t call many of us to jobs that would prevent us from also serving others through unpaid work.

Even if you have a paid job, the most important work God calls you to may be outside your job. Your job may meet your need for money — which in itself fulfills part of God’s command to work — but it may not fulfill all the other purposes God has for your work. We have seen that caring for children and for aged or incapacitated people is a kind of work, and many people who do it also have another paid job. On the other hand, a so-called hobby could be the most important work God is leading you to. You might work at writing, painting, music, acting, astronomy, leading a youth group, volunteering at a historical society, maintaining a nature reserve or a thousand other kinds of work. If something like this is your calling, you will probably engage it in a more serious way than someone else to whom it is a leisure activity, yet you may still earn your living in some other way. There is a distinction between work and leisure. [1] But any given activity could be work — paid or unpaid — for one person, and leisure for another.

Of course, if you have a job, it is an aspect of your calling for as long as you have it. Regardless of how your job relates to the other activities you are called to, you must do your job as unto God (Colossians 3:23). Therefore, a job can never be only a way to make money. It must also a way to serve others, a way to make the world more like God what intends, and a way to be formed by God. You might not consider your job to be a major aspect of your calling, but God might be using it to prepare you for the future in ways you can't imagine. If you ask God to help you do your job faithfully and to make the most of whatever opportunities it may offer, then it will never be a waste of time.

Second, we must take care not to let work dominate the other elements of life. Even if God leads you to a particular job or profession, you will need to set limits to that work to make room for the other elements of God’s call or guidance in your life. If God leads you to be married and to be a small business owner, for example, then you will have to balance the time and responsibilities of both callings. Work should not crowd out leisure, rest and worship. There is no formula for balancing work and the other elements of life . But take care not to let a sense of calling to a job blind you to God’s calling in the other areas of life. For more on this, see the TOW Project article " Rest and Work ."

God’s Guidance to Particular Work

At this point, we are now able to delve into the possibility of God’s guidance to a particular task, job, career or type of work. We have seen that:

Everyone is called to belong to Christ and to participate in his creative and redemptive work.
Everyone is commanded to work to the degree they are able.
God calls us to a whole life, not just to a job.

Putting these together leads us to conclude that your profession is probably not God’s highest concern for you. God is much more concerned that you come under the saving grace of Christ and participate in his work of creation and redemption, whatever your job may be. Exactly what kind of work you do is a lower-level concern.

Although getting us into the right job or career is not God’s highest concern, that doesn’t mean it is of no concern. In fact, the distinctive work of the Holy Spirit is to guide and empower people for the life and work to which God leads them. In the Old Testament, God gave people the skills needed for their work on occasion, as we have seen with Bezalel and Oholiab in the building of the tabernacle. But now the Spirit routinely guides believers to particular work and gives them the skills they need (1 Corinthians 12:7-10). [1] He provides guidance for both what kind of work people do and how to do that work.

Read on to explore how God guides people to particular work .

Discerning God’s Guidance to a Particular Kind of Work
Direct, Unmistakable Call to Particular Work

With the understanding that the ultimate image of calling in the Bible is the calling to follow Jesus, we are ready to explore callings to particular kinds of work. If by “calling,” we mean a direct, unmistakable command from God to take up a particular task, job, profession or type of work, then calling is very rare in the Bible. No more than a hundred or so people were called by God in this sense. God called Noah to build the ark. God called Moses and Aaron to their tasks (Exodus 3:4, 28:1). He called prophets such as Samuel (1 Samuel 3:10), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:4-5), Amos (Amos 7:15) and others. He called Abram and Sarah and a few others to undertake journeys or to relocate (which might be taken as a kind of workplace calling). He placed people in political leadership including Joseph, Gideon, Saul, David and David’s descendants. God chose Bezalel and Oholiab as chief craftsmen for the tabernacle (Exodus 31:1-6). Jesus called the apostles and some other of his disciples (e.g., Mark 3:14-19), and the Holy Spirit called Barnabas and Saul to be missionaries (Acts 13:2). The word “call” is not always used, but the unmistakable direction of God for a particular person to do a particular job is clear in these cases.

Aside from these examples, very few people in the Bible received an individual call to a particular kind of work from God. This strongly suggests that a direct calling from God to particular work is also rare today. If God is calling you directly and unmistakably to particular work, you don’t need guidance from an article such as this, except perhaps for the affirmation that, yes, this type of calling does occur in the Bible in rare instances. Therefore, we will not discuss direct, unmistakable, personal calling further, but will instead focus on whether God guides or leads people to particular types of work through less dramatic means.

Guidance to a Job or Profession

Although God does not give most people a direct, individual, unmistakable call to a particular job or profession, God does give guidance to people in less dramatic forms, including Bible study, prayer, Christian community and individual reflection. Developing a general attentiveness to God’s guidance in life is beyond the scope of this article. But we will look at three major considerations for discerning God’s vocational guidance.

The Needs of the World

The first consideration is the needs of the world. The single strongest indicator of what God wants you to do is probably your awareness of what needs to get done to make the world more like what God intends. This doesn’t necessarily mean huge, global problems, but simply anything in the world that needs to be done. Earning a living to support yourself and your family is one example mentioned in the Bible:

Another biblical example is working so as to meet the needs of individuals around you besides your family:

Working to serve the good of the larger society is also a biblical imperative:

Of course, it is impossible for you to meet every need of the world, so you have to narrow it down a bit. Start with needs for which you are personally responsible, such as raising your children or paying your debts. Beyond that, pay attention to needs that you are in a good position to meet, or that few other people are willing to address, or that you find especially pressing. You might be in a good position to run for an elected office in your own city or town, for example, compared to moving away to find work. On the other hand, you might be one of the few people willing to document human rights abuses in a country half way around the world. Or you might become convinced that teaching troubled youth is more pressing than joining a band. Moreover, it might become clear that something in your life other than your job or career is the most important way you are helping to meet the world’s needs. It would be pointless to get a job counseling troubled youth, only to neglect your own children.

The point is that God has given everyone the ability to recognize something of what the world needs. He seems to expect us to notice it and get to work, rather than waiting for a special call from him. There is no biblical formula for translating the needs of the world into a precise job calling. That’s why you need to seek God’s guidance in the various forms of discernment available to you.

Your Skills and Gifts

The second consideration is your skills and gifts. The Bible says that God gives people gifts for accomplishing the work he wants them to do, and it names some of the gifts and skills that God imparts:

As the last two passages show, when Paul discusses the gifts of the Spirit, he is usually referring to their use in the church. But if all work done by Christians is done for the Lord (Colossians 3:23), then we can infer that the Spirit’s gifts are also given for use in the workplace. Gifts and skills therefore provide an element of guidance for discerning God’s guidance.

A number of tools have been developed to help people discern their gifts and make use of them in workplace settings (see “For further exploration”). However, it is easy to pay too much attention to your skills and gifts. The present generation of westerners is the most gift-analyzed in human history, yet this penchant for analysis can lead to self-absorption, crowding out attention to the needs of the world. These passages say that God gives gifts for the common good, not personal satisfaction. Besides, in many cases, God gives his gifts only after you take the job in which you’ll need them. Paying too much attention to the gifts you already have can keep you from receiving the gifts God wants to give you.

Nonetheless, the gifts you already have may give you some indication about how to best meet the needs of the world. It would be narcissistic to declare that God has called you to be the world’s greatest pianist, and then expect him to download the necessary talent into you after years of mediocre piano playing and lukewarm practicing. Career guidance via skills and gifts is a difficult balancing act, which is why it must be sought in the midst of relationship with God and fellow Christians.

Here again, we must not become focused on work to the exclusion of the rest of life. God also gives gifts for our family life, friendships, recreation, volunteering and the whole breadth of life’s activities.

Your Truest Desires

Finally, the Bible says that your truest or deepest desires are also important to God.

Christians sometimes expect that if God calls them to some job, it will be something they hate. Otherwise, why would God have to call them to it? One morbid Christian fantasy is to think of one country you would hate living in, and then suppose that God is calling you to be a missionary there. But the best missionaries have a great desire for the place and people they serve. Besides, who says God wants you to be a missionary? If God is guiding you towards some kind of job or profession, it’s more likely that you may find a deep desire for it in your heart.

However, it can be exceedingly difficult to get in touch with your truest or deepest desires. Our motivations become so confused by sin and the brokenness of the world that our apparent desires are often far from the true desires that God has implanted in the depths of our hearts.

For this reason, we cannot just say, “Do what makes you happy.” What makes you happy — or seems to make you happy — might be far from meeting the needs of the world, or using your skills and gifts for the common good, or even from fulfilling your true desires. And the opposite is often true. The work that would fulfill your true desire appears at first to be undesirable, and may require great sacrifice and difficult labor. And your truest desires may be met in many areas of life, not necessarily in work. Knowing what you truly desire requires spiritual maturity, perhaps more than you may have at the moment you’re facing a decision. But at least you can get rid of the idea that God only calls you to something you hate. In this light, Frederick Buechner writes: “The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” [1]

Freedom in Christ

These three considerations — the needs of the world, your skills and gifts, and your truest desires — are guides, but they are not absolutes. For one thing, in a fallen world, you may have very little ability to choose your job anyway. Throughout history, most people have had the job of slave, farmer or homemaker, and that is still the case in much of the world outside the most developed countries. It is hard to imagine that - residents of a few developed countries aside - God wants most people to be slaves, farmers or homemakers. Rather, it seems that circumstances prevent most people from choosing jobs they truly desire to do. This is not to imply that some people don’t or shouldn’t enjoy farming, homemaking, or any other kind of legitimate work, but rather that the circumstances of the world dictate that many people work in jobs they don’t like. Yet, under God’s care, even being a slave can be a blessing (Matthew 24:45-47, 1 Corinthians 7:21-24). In no way does this legitimize slavery in today’s world. It simply means that God is with you wherever you work. It may be better to learn to like the job you have — and to find ways to participate in Christ’s work in it — than to try to find a job you think you’ll like better.

Even in the developed economies, many people have little choice about the kind of work they do for a living. The Christian community would do well to equip people both to make choices about their profession, and to follow God’s leading in whatever work we find ourselves doing. Whatever your job, God’s gifts enable you to work for the common good, to find more contentment in your work, and to overcome or endure the negative aspects of your situation. Most importantly, God promises eventual liberation from work’s toil, sweaty labor, and thistles.

Even if you do have the freedom to choose your job, the three considerations we have been considering - the needs of the world, your gifts and skills, and your truest desires - are guides, not dictators. In Christ, believers have perfect freedom:

That means you have the freedom to take risks, to fail, and to make mistakes. God might lead you to a job you know nothing about, have no present knack for, and don’t think you’d like. Would you be willing to take that job? Conversely, you might discover late in life that you missed God’s professional calling for you. Take heart, at the end, you will not be judged on getting the right job or fulfilling your God-given potential. You will be judged on the merits of Jesus Christ, applied to you only by God’s grace in giving you faith. The calling to belong to Christ is God’s only indispensable calling.

The body of Christ on earth is the community of believers (Romans 12:5). Therefore, freedom in Christ means that God’s calling or leading is best discerned in dialogue with the community, not in isolation. We have already seen that the needs of the world (a form of community) are important as you discern what kind of work God is leading you towards. The community is also an important factor in how you discern God’s leading. What do others perceive as God’s leading for you? What do they experience as your gifts and skills, the needs of the world, and the deepest desires they discern in you? Engage in discussions about God’s leading with those in your community who know you well. It may be wise to talk with a spiritual companion or advisor, to gather feedback from people you work closely with, or to ask a group of people to meet with you regularly as you discern God’s leading.

The community is also an essential element in discerning who is led to the different kinds of work needed in the world. Many people may have similar gifts and desires that can help meet the needs of the world. But it may not be that God wants all of them to do the same work. You need to discern not only the work God is leading you to, but also the work he is leading others to. The community needs a balanced ensemble of workers working in harmony. For example, physicians bring powerful gifts and skills — and frequently a deep desire for healing — into the world’s great needs for physical healing. Yet in the US, at least, there may be too many specialists and not enough primary care physicians to meet the community’s deeds. One by one, medical students are matching their gifts, desires and the needs of the world to discern a leading toward medicine. But all-in-all, the ensemble of physicians is becoming a bit unbalanced. Discerning God’s calling is a community endeavor.

Is Church Work a Higher Calling?

Many Christians have the impression that church workers — especially evangelists, missionaries, pastors, priests, ministers and the like — have a higher calling than other workers. While there is little in the Bible to support this impression, by the Middle Ages, "religious" life — as a monk or nun — was widely considered holier than ordinary life. Regrettably, this distortion remains influential in churches of all traditions, even though the doctrine of virtually every church today affirms the equal value of the work of lay people. In the Bible, God calls individuals both to church-related and non-church-related work. For example:

Calls to Church Work

Calls to non-church work.

Given the Biblical evidence, it would be inaccurate to think that God calls church workers but not other types of workers.

Some confusion arises because many churches require that their individuals be “called” to be ordained or to serve as pastors, priests or other ministers. Often the word “call” is used to describe the process of selecting a minister or the decision to enter church work full-time. However, as in the Bible itself, these situations are rarely direct, unmistakable, personal calls from God. Rather, they may describe a strong sense of guidance by God. As we have seen, God’s guidance can occur just as strongly in non-church-related jobs and professions. Since the Theology of Work Project does not take church work as one of its subjects, we will not attempt to evaluate whether “callings” to church work are more intense, more direct, more evident or more necessary than callings to non-church work. We will affirm that church work is not in general a higher calling than non-church work, and that the term “call” applies just as much to non-church work as to church work.

We also affirm that non-church work is as much “full-time Christian service” as church work.

All Christians are called (that is, commanded) to conduct everything they do, round the clock, as full-time service to Christ :

Before concluding our discussion on this point, we should note that one stream of thought views 1 Timothy 5:17-18 as contradicting the view we have just laid out. According to this perspective, being a church elder (roughly equivalent to a pastor or priest in modern church usage) is in fact a higher calling.

Under this view, being a pastor is a “double honor” compared to other professions . But most Bible commentaries reject this interpretation. [1] A more accurate reading is that elders who do their work well are worthy of greater honor (or a greater honorarium) compared to other elders who do their work merely adequately. [2] The Old Testament quotations about pay further reinforce the sense that this passage is about rewarding high-performing elders, not about comparing church work to other work. The passage’s true comparison is among pastors, not between pastors and lay people.

The only jobs that do not have equal status in God’s eyes are those that require work forbidden by the Bible or are incompatible with its values. For example, jobs requiring murder, adultery, stealing, false witness or greed (Exodus 20:13-17), usury (Leviticus 25:26), damage to health (Matthew 10:8), or harm to the environment (Genesis 2:15) are illegitimate in God’s sight. This is not to say that people who do these jobs have lesser status in God’s eyes. People whose circumstances lead them to illegitimate work are not necessarily bad people. Deuteronomy 22:21 condemns prostituting yourself, for example, yet Christ's response to prostitutes was not condemnation, but deliverance (Luke 7:47-50; Matthew 21:31-32). Jobs of this sort might be the lesser of two evils in certain situations, but they could never be God’s desired work for someone.

A call to ministry or church work is no more sacred than a call to other types of work. What matters most is not one's job title or place of work, but obedience to God, the one who calls us.

Changing Jobs

If God leads or guides people to their work, could it ever be legitimate to change jobs? Wouldn’t that be rejecting God’s guidance to the work you already have? Martin Luther, the 16 th century Protestant theologian, famously argued against changing jobs. This was based largely on his understanding of this passage:

Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called. (1 Corinthians 7:20)

Luther equated “condition” with occupation, and concluded that it was not legitimate for Christians to change occupations. However, Luther’s contemporary John Calvin did not accept this interpretation — and most modern theologians do not either. For one thing, it doesn’t seem to take sufficient account of the very next verse, which suggests that changing occupations is legitimate, at least in some circumstances:

Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. If you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.

Miroslav Volf has written that since the factors by which God guides people to work may change over the course of a working life, God may indeed guide people to change their work. [2] Your capabilities should grow with your experience in serving God. He may lead you to bigger tasks that require you to change jobs. “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21).

Conversely, if you become a Christian later in life, might God require you to change jobs? It might seem that finding new life in Christ means getting a new job or career. However, generally, this is not the case. Since there is no hierarchy of professions, it is generally a mistake to think God wants you to find a “higher calling” upon becoming a Christian. Unless your job is of the illegitimate type discussed earlier, or unless the job or colleagues threaten to keep you stuck in unchristian habits, there may be no need to change jobs. However, whether you change jobs or not, you probably need to do your work differently than before, paying attention now to biblical commands, values, and virtues, as happened with Zacchaeus the tax collector:

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.”Luke 19:5-9

Discerning God’s Guidance for How You Work

How you work is at least as important to God as what job or profession you have. In every job, you have at least some opportunity to meet people’s needs, to employ your gifts and skills, and to express — or discover — your deepest desires. Your decision every day to serve God today is more important than positioning yourself for the right job tomorrow.

In fact, the little you may be able to do in God’s service today is often the key to being able to do more in the future. “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much,” said Jesus (Luke 16:10). Over a lifetime, you can serve Christ best by making the most of every job for his purposes, whether you feel called to every job or not. The specifics of how to follow Christ in the workplace are covered in a number of topical articles by the Theology of Work Project, available at www.theologyofwork.org , including Truth and Deception , Ethics at Work , and Evangelism - Sharing the Gospel at Work .

CONTENT NOT YET AVAILABLE: *The Meaning and Value of Work , *Relationships at Work , *Conflict , *Leadership .

Conclusions About Calling

We take seriously God’s calling and guiding of people to various kinds of ordinary work. In doing so, we are trying to correct the long-standing tendency to regard ordinary work as unimportant to God and unworthy of his calling. But it would be equally wrong to elevate the importance of your job or profession to a position of idolatry. Getting the right job does not bring salvation, or even happiness. Moreover, the true aim of work for the Christian is to serve the common good, not to advance his or her own interests. Over a lifetime, serving the common good comes far more from doing each day’s work to the best of your ability in Christ, than it does from finding the best job for yourself.

For further exploration

Historical-theological perspective.

For an historical-theological perspective on vocation at greater length than is possible in this article, see Vocation in Historical-Theological Perspective , by Gordon Preece .

The Legitimacy of Various Professions

Banks, Robert. God the Worker: Journeys into the Mind, Heart and Imagination of God. Sutherland, N.S.W.: Albatross Books, 1992.

Pope John Paul II. On Human Work (Laborem Exercens) . Vatican Translation. Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1981, especially chapters 6, 9, 10, 21 and 22.

Richardson, Alan. The Biblical Doctrine of Work . London: SCM Press LTD, 1952, especially chapters “Creative Craftsmanship and Skill,” “Work as Divine Ordinance for Man,” and “‘Vocation’ in the New Testament.” Richardson generally takes a dimmer view of ordinary work than this Note does, and his biblical approach reflects a 1940-50s sensibility that seems dated today. However, he compiled an excellent collection of work-related scripture, given the book’s brevity, and his chapters discuss many of the most important faith-work topics. Also, like the Theology of Work Project, he used a process designed to invite wide participation and response, which is incorporated in the published draft. We do not necessarily agree with his conclusions or biblical views, but we find his book highly thought-provoking.

Stevens, R. Paul. Doing God's Business: Meaning and Motivation for the Marketplace . Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006, especially chapters 1 and 2.

Career Guidance and Discerning Gifts

Banks, Robert. Faith Goes to Work . Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1999.

Mackenzie, Alistair, Wayne Kirkland and Annette Dunham. Soul Purpose. Christ Church, NZ: NavPress, 2004.

Schuurman, Douglas J. Vocation: Discerning Our Calling in Life. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

Schuster, John P. Answering Your Call: A Guide for Living Your Deepest Purpose. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2002.

Calling in Christian Thought and Practice

Guinness, Os. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life. London: Word Publishing, 1998.

Hardy, Lee . The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990.

Placher, Williams C., ed. Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005.

Preece, Gordon R. The Viability of the Vocation Tradition in Trinitarian, Credal and Reformed Perspective: The Threefold Call . Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998.

Stevens, R. Paul . The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical Perspective . Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.

Volf, Miroslav. Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work . Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2001.

John Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1975, 2008), 48-54.

The Steering Committee of the Theology of Work Project regards all gifts, skills and talents as coming from God. The gifts of the Spirit discussed in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Corinthians chapters 12-14, Romans chapter 12, Ephesians 4:11-16, and 1 Peter 4:10-12) are not limited to the particular abilities listed in those passages. Nor are they limited only to uses in the church. This article does not attempt to prove this position, but merely to acknowledge it. For more, see the discussion of 1 Corinthians chapters 12-14 in 1 Corinthians and Work at www.theologyofwork.org .

This verse (Romans 12:6), by the way, was the inspiration for and source of the title under which the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator was published, and there can be no doubt that many in the world at large regard God’s gifts to be an essential element of professional calling. See Isabel Myers, Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type (Palo Alto, CA: CPP Books, 1993).

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC , rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper, 1993) under “Calling.”

I. Howard Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles , The International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 610ff.

William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles , Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 46, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2000), 309.

“Avail yourself of the opportunity” is the alternative reading given in the NRSV footnote. The main reading is more ambiguous: “Make use of your present condition now more than ever.” The NRSV alternative reading is congruent with most modern translations, including NIV, TNIV, NASB and NEB, as well as with the King James.

Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 109.

How I Learned to Let God Shape My Plans - Barry Rowan

Are you letting God shape your plans? How do you know if you're submitting to God’s plan, or trying to fit God...

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The primary thing that seems to be our calling is our identity.

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For Christians, everything matters, because we believe that God is at work in our world...and in our lives.

Calling & Vocation (Webinar) from Redeemer City to City Global Faith & Work Initiative and...

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VIDEO: Did You Miss Your Vocation?

Last month, Mark Labberton, the president of Fuller Seminary and our personal friend published an incredibly important new book, Called.

God’s Purposes for Your Work - Tom Lutz

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What Does the Bible Say About Wealth and Provision? (Overview)

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10 Key Points About Work in the Bible Every Christian Should Know

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Finding God’s Calling for Your Work (Romans 12) - God’s Word for Work, Online Video Bible Study

Calling & Vocation (Webinar) from Redeemer City to City Global Faith & Work Initiative and VOCA Center

Every resource on our site was made possible through the financial support of people like you. With your gift of any size, you’ll enable us to continue equipping Christians with high-quality biblically-based content.

Calling and Work is an 8-session Bible study that explores the meaning of vocation and "calling" as it relates to work. The Scriptures, questions, and prayers help participants apply the scriptural teachings to daily life experiences.

Where's God on Monday?, by Alistair Mackenzie and Wayne Kirkland, straddles the divide between theological reflection and practical application to introduce readers to a basic biblical theology of work. Where's God on Monday? is written in accessible language for the average person in the pews, yet thoughtful enough to be used as a text in Bible colleges.

Do you find it challenging to be a Christian in a competitive workplace? Discover how to enjoy a successful career without sacrificing your soul! Encouraging you to hold firm to your faith in win-at-all-costs corporate environments, Tim Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf help you carry your beliefs from church to job, stay true to your values, make God-honoring choices, and more.

calling-changing jobs
calling-discerning
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Contributors: William Messenger Adopted by the Theology of Work Project Board Oct. 30, 2010. Image by Pexels / Pixabay . Used with Permission .

Author: Theology of Work Project

Theology of Work Project Online Materials by Theology of Work Project, Inc. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License . Based on a work at www.theologyofwork.org

You are free to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work), and remix (to adapt the work) for non-commercial use only, under the condition that you must attribute the work to the Theology of Work Project, Inc., but not in any way that suggests that it endorses you or your use of the work.

Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, Copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

vocation matters

Insights and Conversations from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE)

Vocation Virtually: Telling Your Story

Understanding this dimension of vocation offers an invitation to become the author of your own story. To do that, students must first discover they have a story to tell. Authoring one’s own story creates agency.

Part 5 of a series describing an electronic “vPortfolio” (vocation portfolio) developed at Augsburg University and centered on five metaphors for vocation: place, path, perspective, people, and story.

A fifth metaphor of vocation is story, which underscores the sense that everyone has a story to tell. There is a narrative arc to each life, and that story has a beginning, middle, and end. This dimension of vocation invites students to author their own stories and, in the telling, claim agency. “In the beginning, I/we….” or “Once upon a time, I/we….”

In The Gates of the Forest , Elie Wiesel relates an old Hasidic tale about the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov. When the rabbi saw misfortune threatening the Jews, he would go to a certain part of the forest, light a fire, and say a special prayer. The crisis would be averted. Subsequent rabbis confronted similar crises, but one forgot the prayer, another forgot how to light the fire, another forgot the location of the special place in the forest. The rabbis did whatever they could remember, and the misfortune was overcome. Finally, crisis came to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn. He sat in his armchair, head in his hands, and lamented, “I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.” And it was. Wiesel concludes: “God made man because he loves stories.”

“The gates of the forest”

John MacWhirter (1839-1911)

Public domain

An Afghani Muslim student was so moved by Wiesel’s example of the power of telling stories that she began to craft her own narrative of a community under threat. Her family had fled Afghanistan only a few years before, leaving behind family, friends, and a region wracked by war. In her portfolio, she told the stories of the country she’d left behind, illustrating them with photos she’d taken herself, and using her tagline, “Between Two Worlds” as a title. She discovered that she loved to write; she discovered something else as well–she had a story to tell.

Many religious traditions highlight stories, myths, and creation narratives. The Hebrew bible begins with a story of creation, “In the beginning, God….” The Torah goes on to narrate the covenants between God and God’s people, covenants with Noah, Abraham, and Moses. Alongside laws governing relationships to God and humans ( halakah), Jews have stories ( haggadah). In absence of a stable homeland, Jews located themselves in stories. The story of the exodus from Egypt is re-told and re-enacted every year at Passover around a meal. Remembering this story of liberation, Jews are literally re-membered into a community of promise.

The gospel of John draws on the first words of Genesis to narrate another creation story, this one about the creation of “the beloved community”. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) The echo is intentional.

In a real way, all of the metaphors of calling come together in that narrative.

Exercise: Crafting a Public Leadership Narrative

Activist, organizer, and teacher Marshall Ganz locates his own vocation at the intersection of three overlapping stories: the story of self, the story of us, and, the story of “now.” Read his brief essay, “Why Stories Matter,” with particular attention to how he crafts those stories into a public leadership narrative.

Story of self

Everyone has a story of self. That story can be told differently at different points in our lives, depending on circumstance or audience or insight. Ganz talks about growing up as the son of a rabbi. Words from the Passover seder deeply affected him, “You were once a slave in Egypt.” He had to leave his childhood home in California, but those words never left him.

You likely told a story in your “This I Believe” statement. Go back and review it.

For your story, think of one major challenge you faced and describe how you coped with it. Introduce your story with a summary: “Here’s how I learned the importance of ….” Then, narrate the challenge and how you handled it. Conclude with a return to what you learned, how it marks you as a person of faith and public leader, and why it’s important to share.

Story of us

We are all part of communities or groups that claim us, communities that we claim. It could be a family, a faith tradition, a sports team or choral group. Belonging to a particular community orients people toward certain values, which telegraph to its members a reason or purpose for being in the world. As the son of a rabbi, Ganz lived inside the story of the exodus from Egypt, a land of slavery and house of bondage. Not surprisingly, he found himself in the civil rights movement in the Sixties, part of another exodus from slavery.

You named some of your communities in the “Name your ‘peeps’/people” exercise. Go back and review that list. Identify one value you learned being in this community, tell the story of how you learned it and made it your own.

Story of “now”

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of “the fierce urgency of now,” his way of identifying the gap between the way things are in the world and the way they should be. Philosophers formulate this as the difference between what is and what ought to be .

Identify one of those gaps that you are particularly concerned with: climate change, racism, poverty, the achievement gap. How did you become aware of this problem (story of self)? Now, tell a story of how your core commitments (story of self) and community values (story of us) help you address “the fierce urgency of now.” Go back to your tagline from the original exercise on vocation as perspective . You already have the title for your story!

In this series of posts on metaphors, I’ve identified some metaphors for vocation that have been helpful to me, as I work in religiously diverse classrooms with students who hunger to make sense of a broken world. What metaphors have you used? Rebecca Schlatter Liberty proposes the metaphors of puzzle, river, and “treasure hunt.” Kathleen Cahalan finds nouns too static to capture the spirit of vocation, using prepositions instead. In her book, The Stories We Live, she argues that people are called by God, as they are, from some people, places, and things and to other people, places, and things, for service, etc.

What language would you offer? Are there other metaphors that you have used in thinking about vocation?

V-PORTFOLIO SERIES: Click here to see the entire series of posts describing the v-portfolio and each of the five metaphors.

Martha (Marty) Stortz is the Bernhard M. Christensen Professor of Religion and Vocation at Augsburg University . Prior to joining the community at Augsburg in 2010, she taught at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in The Graduate Theological Union for 29 years. She wonders why it took her so long to get into higher education. She is an avid swimmer and writer, and she is a life-long pilgrim. For other blog posts by Marty, click here .

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At This Time and In This Place: Vocation and Higher Education

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7 Vocation and Story: Narrating Self and World

Published: September 2015
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This chapter explores the role of narrative in the shaping of one’s vocation. Every calling stands within a story; its characters act alongside others, adopt goals that advance the plot, and remember their stories to make sense of their lives. The chapter surveys recent work on narrative in philosophy, theology, and ethics; following Sharon Daloz Parks, it also considers undergraduate education as an opportune time for discerning the narrative threads constitutive of one’s past and determinative of one’s future. Students often find themselves ensconced in larger “framing narratives” not of their own making; these often expand or restrict the scope of their own personal narratives. The chapter examines three examples of such metanarratives (tragic optimism, cynicism, and charity), then offers practical suggestions about how students might be helped to tell more coherent, truthful, and sensitive narratives of their own lives as a way of deepening their vocational discernment.

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Committee on the Study of Religion

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88722d666dda333b4ab34c05d4e279fa, choosing a vocation: an essay on agency.

There were a couple of things Cristina knew for sure. She did not know which path her life would take, but she knew that either she would get married and establish a family or she would lead a (lay) consecrated life devoted to God:

There is that clarity that I started to have when I had the encounter with Christ. Around me society is full of people who don't have a definite form of life, right? So many people who are not married, for a thousand reasons, who are not married but also not consecrated. [Before,] this wasn't clear to me. I thought yes, everybody could do what they wanted to. But on the contrary: no, it isn't like that. And that made me happy. That is a truth that I have discovered when encountering Christ, and that made me happy, because I said: “So much the better, there are two paths, and so much the better that no other paths exist, that there are no other possibilities.”

Cristina acquired this knowledge through her involvement with the Italian Catholic movement Comunione e Liberazione (CL), or through following the charisma of Father Luigi Guissani, as members of the movement often put it. Father Guissani began his work of “restoring a Christian presence” in 1954, in a high school in Milan, working within the structure of the established Catholic youth movement Azione Catolica, and in particular its female section, Gioventu Studentesca (GS). The movement was reconfigured during the 1960s and began using the name Comunione e Liberazione, first in publications and then at an inaugural conference in 1971. The movement's reconfiguration was in response to critical events of the time, the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) and the student revolts of 1968. The reconfiguration also signaled the maturation of the movement, as young followers grew up and sought to pursue the religious, social and cultural experiences of GS in ways that were better suited to their adult lives. This led to the emergence of a (lay) consecrated pattern of life within the movement, known first as the “adult groups” and later as Memores Domini. Memores Domini take a number of vows, including the vow of chastity and obedience, and live together in same-sex houses. This manner of living is characterized by both a contemplative, monastic dimension, including daily hours of silence, and an emphasis on being “in the world,” which is expressed through a strong commitment to work, and hence to a professional life, as the context par excellence for keeping alive “the memory of Christ.”

I first met Cristina in 2000 in Milan, where I was doing ethnographic work on female piety and religious agency. Cristina was a visitor to the CL female student house where I was living at the time, and which resembled very much the house she lived in during her own student years within CL university community structures. Cristina had recently graduated in architecture, and she was approaching the moment when the contours of her life path would become clear. Her attraction to the life of Memores Domini was evident in our conversations, and this was not unusual: I regularly encountered such attraction among students connected to CL, particularly among women, who constituted the majority of Memores Domini.

Memores Domini follow a vocation. Within CL, following either a familial or a consecrated life is considered to be a vocation, yet the vocation of Memores Domini is more readily recognized as a religious vocation, as understood within the Catholic tradition, and includes not only a divine calling but also its subsequent verification with a spiritual counselor. Vocation was on Cristina's mind when we met, and it became an important part of all our conversations, including an in-depth interview. When I later analyzed these interactions, I discerned a subtle but undeniable tension between my reliance on the language of choice when asking about the course of her life, and Cristina's steering away from that language. Her uneasiness with the vocabulary of choice became most explicit when we touched on the question of work-life balance and the ways in which this is a particular challenge for women:

Yesterday I was speaking to a colleague of mine who said that the family is a vocation, just like work is, and that one has to choose: “either family or work.” This horrified me. As if I can choose family as a vocation! Already here the sentence doesn't work: I choose the family as my vocation.

Vocation, Cristina insisted, belongs to a different realm than choice: one does not simply “choose” vocations. One might receive a vocation or discover it, be able to hear it calling or understand it, either slowly or in a split-second, willingly or unwillingly. One might accept it or fight it, but one does not choose it.

A young sociologist at the time, I was not yet specifically trained to account for Cristina's understanding of vocation in a social scientific manner. Or rather, her understanding of vocation stood in sharp contrast to common social scientific approaches that frame vocation as a “personal choice.” The latter, of course, adequately reflects how many people today understand vocation. The Young and Vocation , a recent study on contemporary ideas of vocation among a representative sample of young people (between the ages of 16 and 29) in Italy, shows that the term “vocation” generally evokes the idea of self-realization rather than imposition (79% to 8%, respectively), and a sense of satisfaction rather than renunciation (71% to 13%). 1 Moreover, when Italian youth do connect vocation to its religious dimension, the religious call is interpreted as “a personal option that makes it possible to aim at a satisfactory self-realization.” 2 These results must be understood, Luigi Berzano argues, in the light of postmodern society, where each individual is impelled to create her own biography. 3

Studies like these effectively document significant and indisputable societal tendencies in how individuals conceive of their life course. My concern, however, lies in the way in which the design of such studies is based on assumptions that are part and parcel of the tendencies they seek to document. This becomes clearer when a rational choice perspective—well established within the sociological study of religion—is used. In their study of the decline of religious vocations within Catholicism in six countries during the period 1965 to 1995, Rodney Stark and Roger Finke argue that the costs of Catholic consecrated religious choices have diminished only marginally, while their benefits have diminished significantly. 4 Thus, vocations are in decline as a consequence of modifications in the advantages and opportunities of religious life—modifications that Stark and Finke associate with the Second Vatican Council. Within this framework, they suggest, the “vocation crisis” in the Roman Catholic Church might be addressed in two ways: either by reducing the costly aspects of these religious choices, or by reinstating the benefits. Stark and Finke show the cost-benefit logic at work in religious life, but they assume at the outset of their inquiry the universal nature of this logic.

Cristina's claim that “the sentence doesn't work” stretches beyond the words of her colleague and implies that, from her point of view, the paradigm of “vocation as choice” does not hold. Considering Cristina's claim brings us to the long-standing question of how sociological categories, of both empirical inquiry and analysis, relate to the categories and meanings respondents use to make sense of their world. By taking Cristina's refutation of “vocation as a choice” seriously, I do not mean to suggest that social scientific analyses should be confined to the categorical distinctions that respondents make. Such a conflation of two distinct levels of social reality and analysis would indeed deprive sociology of its own logic, language, and level of theorizing and analysis, and hence its raison d'être. At the same time, it is widely accepted that empirical inquiries, in order to be methodologically sound, should engage categories that are meaningful to respondents and in which respondents might be able to situate themselves. This is where the problem lies: while Cristina did not consider vocation in terms of “self-realization,” as most respondents in The Young and Vocation survey did, the contrasting term used in the survey—”imposition”—also failed to adequately capture what she means. (It should be noted that about 13% of the respondents did not select either of these two terms.) What Cristina and others like her might understand by vocation gets “lost in social scientific translation,” since it does not fit smoothly into the survey questions and categories. This poses problems, not because Cristina represents a majority point of view on the matter; she does not. But it is important to ensure that minority views inform the ways in which empirical inquiries and analyses are set up, for a whole slew of reasons, and there's one reason that stands out in this case. The Young and Vocation study documents the process of secularization, and the concomitant sacralization of personal life choices, given that the respondents seem to extend an idea of the sacred to the search for authentic existence. 5 But its design struggles to adequately incorporate those experiences that are not based on a secular understanding of vocation. The secularization that the survey ends up revealing is, in other words, already at least partially predisposed by the survey's design.

In sum, Cristina's understanding of vocation cannot be reduced to a biographical choice, and neither is it simply the result of a cost-benefit analysis. This is not to deny that such analytical frameworks can highlight important dimensions of the social reality of vocation. But they do seem to miss, by design, the crux of what vocation entails for people like Cristina. What does it mean to approach vocation as an individual choice, we might ask, when the actor herself insists that her vocation cannot be adequately accounted for in such terms?

Vocation and Sociology

The significance of vocation within sociology greatly exceeds the empirical studies on the matter. 6 Vocation has intrigued sociology, Giuseppe Giordan argues, 7 and this is related to its pivotal role in Max Weber's thinking. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism —Weber's critical engagement with Marx in which he explores the importance of culture and the production of meaning in the formation of society—vocation is a protagonist in two ways. First, it plays a crucial role in accounting for how individual action relates to social transformation. Weber's argument is well known: the Reformation, and in particular Lutheranism, brought about a modern understanding of vocation. Vocation, or calling, continued to be perceived as a divine ordinance, a task set by God, but it also came to include a positive valuation of the fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs. Thus, everyday activities gained religious significance, as ascetic conduct was highly valued, particularly in the Puritan traditions, and labor became an ascetic technique par excellence. As a result, Puritan communities accumulated material wealth—the fruit of their labors—that in turn created a new social formation favorable to the development of capitalism. In other words, asceticism, “carried out of monastic cells into everyday life,” as Weber's well-known wording puts it, played its part in building the modern economic order. Along the way, however, the meaning of vocation continues to shift.

This brings us to the second role vocation plays in Weber's theory, i.e., as a crucial context in which to elucidate his understanding of secularization. Weber traces the development of an “inner-worldly asceticism,” which is central to both a religious and a secular understanding of vocation. While, for the Puritan, asceticism is born out of a relation with God, the asceticism of the modern secular subject is removed from such a relationship and focuses instead on worldly aims. Vocation became secularized, to refer to a profession, an occupation for which an individual is particularly well suited, trained, or qualified.

What does this semantic shift in meaning of vocation, from divine calling to professional occupation, tell us about secularization? The relocation of vocation, or “calling,” to within the subject—as an inner inclination that might be uncovered and actualized—resonates strongly with Talal Asad's discussion of the secular recrafting of “inspiration.” 8 As the Bible went from “the letter of divine inspiration” to a system of human significance, Asad argues, the methods of the German Higher Biblical Criticism “rendered the materiality of scriptural sounds” and writings into something akin to a spiritual poem. Previously, the divine word was necessarily also material, and the inspired words were objects of reverence, which entailed that pious bodies were taught “to listen, to recite, to move, to be still, to be silent, engaged with the acoustics” of those words. 9 The methods of Higher Biblical Criticism, in contrast, relocated the effect of words inside the subject, thus representing a move toward inner spiritual states independent of the senses. As a result, inspiration was no longer thought of as direct divine communication. This, Asad insists, involved a twofold shift: “all causation from outside the world of material bodies [is brought] entirely into that world,” and at the same time this “inside” was progressively reshaped. 10 Vocation is recrafted in a similar manner, as it becomes an inner inclination or inspiration that might be discovered, and joins the universe of authenticity and the rhetoric of sincerity, in which the idea of being true to oneself is conceived as a moral duty. 11

The Turn to Agency

My interest in vocation stems from my interest in the conceptualization of agency, particularly in relation to gender and religion. Agency, in sociological parlance, is commonly understood in terms of choice, or rather, choice is central to the conceptual architecture of agency. Cristina's refusal to consider vocation in terms of choice does not, however, imply that she is prepared to relinquish her sense of agency. Cristina's notion of vocation is in fact ingrained in an understanding of her own capacity to act, which includes the deliberate attempt to make herself receptive to a divine calling, as well as the effort to prepare herself to respond adequately to what such a call might require of her. This could suggest that Cristina's religious conception of vocation might also point to a different understanding of agency than the common one that hinges on the notion of choice.

Within established sociological reasoning, it might be argued that Cristina lacks agency to some extent. Cristina does not claim to be able to choose between what she considers the two fundamental patterns a life can follow; on the contrary, she refutes that choice. It could be argued that she is relatively alienated from her own agency and thus relates to the unfolding of her life course in a rather passive and docile way. One way of framing her outlook might be in terms of “false consciousness,” which implies that the material conditions and choices in her life remain obscured to her. Instead, she ascribes crucial moments in, and conditions of, her life to a source outside of her own will, consciousness, and power. Such accounts stressing the lack of agency have in fact been influential in the case of pious subjects, and of female pious subjects in particular. In sum, the capacity to act, as Cristina conceives, narrates, and represents it, is likely to be found lacking in agency, according to established sociological understandings of agency—and, this lack of agency is particularly gendered.

Alternatively, it could be argued that Cristina is exercising her free choice. The fact that she might be deliberating and narrating that choice through “vocation” could be seen as a strategy of authorization or justification, particularly in a situation where her social environment or her family might oppose such choice. This way of ascribing agency is related to a foundational impulse of feminist theory and women's studies, which insists on valuing women's voices and perspectives and affirming their agency. Feminist theory has indeed made women's lives central to its analysis and is predicated on validating women's perceptions of their own situation. This leads to a feminist insistence on women's agency, which coincides with a new prominence of “agency” in social theory at large, 12 to the extent that we can speak of a “turn to agency” in the last couple of decades. In many ways, this turn to agency remains vital for countering those accounts that deny (pious) women's capacity to act. Yet this insistence on agency also brings its own set of questions and problems. Amy Hollywood has captured the critical conceptual problem in the following question: “how to take seriously the agency of the other . . . when the other seems intent on ascribing her agency to God?” 13 What does it mean to fall back on an established sociological understanding of agency to make sense of a subject, when the subject herself relies on a very different variety of language to speak of her capacity to act? To keep insisting on her agency, while glossing over the difference she points to, replicates, in an uncanny way, the structure of the “false consciousness” argument: her alienation lies in thinking she is not exercising her choice, while in fact she is. 14 And, both ways of accounting for pious women's agency suffer from the fact that they rely on an already established meaning and sense of agency, fixed in advance, rather than on letting agency emerge through the analysis of the particular concepts that enable specific modes of being and acting. 15

One particularly productive way to approach this conundrum is found in Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety . In exploring some of the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in Islamic piety movements poses to feminist theory in particular, and to secular-liberal thought in general, Mahmood looks carefully at conceptions of the self and moral agency that undergird the practices of this nonliberal movement. 16 The theoretical stakes in this approach lie in unpacking a set of normative liberal assumptions about human nature, notably through making her empirical material speak back to them. These include a conceptual critique of both common social scientific and feminist understandings of agency. Mahmood's ethnography—as she considers the worlds and livelihoods of women involved in the piety movement in Egypt—prompts her to question the assumption that human agency consists primarily of acts that challenge social norms and therefore express some kind of resistance to social norms. Not only those acts that resist norms require agential activity, Mahmood argues; the capacity to act is itself to be found in the ways in which one inhabits norms. In order to theorize this agency in a way that renders visible the capacity of a subject who deliberately seeks to uphold certain norms to act, Mahmood turns to the realm of ethics and ethical self-fashioning, and to embodiment, which she approaches through the work of Michel Foucault and an Aristotelian understanding of habitus.

This provides a more adequate approach to Cristina's understanding of vocation and, relatedly, her sense of agency. The desire that shapes Cristina as a subject is not one of self-realization, but, rather, is a desire to lead a life that pleases God. This desire includes acquiring an understanding of God's will, which leads Cristina not only to study important texts as they are presented within CL (which also serves as an interpretative community for those texts), but also to shape her embodied self in a certain way. In order to receive a vocation, one must make oneself receptive, which Cristina does through prayer and regular moments of keeping silence, and through participation in the spiritual exercises of the movement. After receiving a vocation, moreover, as my current research shows, more complex agential activities take place. A calling can be accepted and embraced but also struggled with intensively. It needs to be “verified” with a spiritual counselor; that is, it is interpreted and bestowed with meaning in a context of social interaction and subsequently acted upon in various ways. Religious vocation, in other words, points to a particular shaping of the body and the senses that differs, we could argue, from what Charles Hirschkind has called the “secular body” 17 and the secular sensory cultures through which it is constituted. In order to receive a vocation, one needs to be able to feel and hear or see in particular ways that are not necessarily recognized as secular. This underscores the point that established understandings of agency mobilize particular, secular understandings of the embodied subject.

To conclude: I have used the story of Cristina, who, more than ten years ago, was a young graduate at an important point in her life, to pose an epistemological question about the gap between established sociological concepts, such as agency, and a spectrum of pious livelihoods. During my time as a research associate in the Women's Studies in Religion Program and as a resident of the Center for the Study of World Religions, I have been investigating this question further. In concrete terms, this means I have returned to doing fieldwork within CL, focusing this time on the lives of Memores Domini who took their vows. In theoretical terms, my work explores further the conflicted relationship of sociology to religion and piety, as well as to gender, and makes use of Mahmood's rethinking of agency in terms of ethics and embodiment to unpack some of these tensions and to offer an alternative account of female pious livelihoods. It is not so much that such livelihoods need their own sociological accounts, I believe, but rather that sociology is in need of analytical tools and concepts, in addition to the sociological imagination, that are able to account adequately for more subjects and social realities than it currently does, especially when it comes to gender and religion.

—by Sarah Bracke

This article appears in the Spring 2014 edition of CSWR Today .

Franco Garelli, 'Italian Youth and Ideas of Vocation,' in Vocation and Social Context , ed. Giuseppe Giordan (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 38.
Luigi Berzana, 'Vocation as Personal Choice,' in Vocation and Social Context , ed. Giuseppe Giordan (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, 'Catholic Religious Vocations: Decline and Revival,' Review of Religious Research 42, no. 2 (2000): 125–45.
Garelli, 'Italian Youth and Ideas of Vocation.'
See, e.g., Albert Dilanni, 'Vocations and the Laicization of Religion Life,' America 14 (1987): 207–11; M. Marcelinne Falk, 'Vocations: Identity and Commitment,' Review for Religious 39 (1980): 357–65; Chiamata a scegliere: I giovani italiani di fronte alla vocazione , ed. Franco Garelli (Milano: San Paola, 2006); Roger Finke, 'An Orderly Return to Tradition: Explaining Membership Recruitment to Catholic Religious Orders,' Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36, no. 2 (1997): 218–30; Helen Rose Ebaugh, Jon Lorence, and Janet Saltzman Chafetz, 'The Growth and Decline of the Population of Catholic Nuns Cross-Nationally, 1960–1990: A Case of Secularization as Social Structural Change,' Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 35, no. 2 (1996): 171–83.
Vocation and Social Context , ed. Giuseppe Giordan (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 37–56.
See, e.g., Lois McNay, Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).
Amy Hollywood, 'Gender, Agency, and the Divine in Religious Historiography,' The Journal of Religion 84, no. 4 (2004): 524.
Sarah Bracke, 'Conjugating the Modern/Religious, Conceptualizing Female Religious Agency: Contours of a 'Post-Secular' Conjuncture,' Theory, Culture and Society 25, no. 6 (2008): 51–67.
Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Charles Hirschkind, 'Is There a Secular Body?' Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 4 (2011): 633–47.

Asad, Talal. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Bracke, Sarah. 'Conjugating the Modern/Religious, Conceptualizing Female Religious Agency: Contours of a 'Post-Secular' Conjuncture.' Theory, Culture and Society 25, no. 6 (2008): 51–67.

Berzano, Luigi. 'Vocation as Personal Choice.' In Vocation and Social Context , edited by Giuseppe Giordan. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Garelli, Franco. 'Italian Youth and Ideas of Vocation.' In Vocation and Social Context , edited by Giuseppe Giordan. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Giordan, Giuseppe, ed. Vocation and Social Context . Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Hirschkind, Charles. 'Is There a Secular Body?' Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 4 (2011): 633–47.

Hollywood, Amy. 'Gender, Agency, and the Divine in Religious Historiography.' The Journal of Religion 84, no. 4 (2004): 514–25.

Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

McNay, Lois. Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory . Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.

Stark, Rodney, and Roger Finke. 'Catholic Religious Vocations: Decline and Revival.' Review of Religious Research 42, no. 2 (2000): 125–45.

Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism . London: Routledge, 2001.

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Understanding Emotional Labor and its Impact on Work and Life

This essay is about the concept of emotional labor, defined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild as managing feelings and expressions to meet job expectations. It explains how emotional labor involves regulating emotions in professions like customer service, healthcare, and education. The essay discusses the impacts of emotional labor, such as emotional exhaustion and burnout, and distinguishes between surface acting and deep acting. It highlights the gendered nature of emotional labor and its effects on personal life. The essay concludes with strategies for organizations and individuals to manage emotional labor, emphasizing the importance of emotional intelligence and self-care.

How it works

Emotional labor, a concept pioneered by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in her seminal work “The Managed Heart” published in 1983, delineates the intricate process of managing sentiments and expressions to meet the emotional prerequisites of a vocation. This construct has since undergone evolution, enveloping a vast spectrum of professions and responsibilities, and accentuating the often-neglected demands imposed on individuals in both their occupational and personal spheres.

At its core, emotive labor entails the regulation of affect to adhere to institutional expectations, ensuring that interactions with patrons, clientele, and peers are imbued with positivity and professionalism.

This encompasses exhibiting warmth and zeal, repressing adverse emotions, and navigating intricate interpersonal dynamics. Occupations within the service sector, healthcare, academia, and client servicing frequently necessitate elevated levels of emotive labor, as personnel are mandated to uphold a particular emotional disposition irrespective of their genuine sentiments.

Consider, for instance, the predicament of an airline stewardess who must exude composure and amiability during exigent circumstances, such as contending with a disruptive passenger or managing mid-flight crises. Similarly, educators routinely engage in emotive labor by imparting encouragement and solace to pupils, even amid their own personal tribulations. These instances elucidate how emotive labor is entrenched in myriad roles, demanding a substantial allocation of cognitive and affective resources.

The ramifications of emotive labor on individuals can be profound. On one hand, adeptly managing emotions can yield positive outcomes, including heightened patron contentment, augmented team cohesion, and enhanced overall vocational efficacy. However, the perpetual necessity to regulate one’s emotions can precipitate emotional depletion, burnout, and a sense of estrangement from one’s authentic self. This phenomenon is particularly pervasive in vocations that mandate elevated levels of empathy and interpersonal engagement.

A pivotal facet of emotive labor lies in the dichotomy between surface acting and profound acting. Surface acting entails feigning emotions that are not inherently experienced, such as contriving a smile or assuming a genial demeanor when beset by irritation. This manifestation of emotive labor can be particularly draining, engendering dissonance between one’s internal state and external comportment. Profound acting, conversely, entails endeavors to synchronize one’s internal emotional state with the anticipated emotional manifestation. This might necessitate genuinely striving to evoke empathy or enthusiasm to engender a more authentic interaction. While profound acting may prove more sustainable in the long haul, it still necessitates substantial exertion and emotional regulation.

The repercussions of emotive labor extend beyond the vocational milieu. The strain of perpetually managing emotions can permeate personal relationships, leading to escalated stress levels and diminished emotional availability for kin and acquaintances. Furthermore, the gendered dimension of emotive labor cannot be disregarded. Women, particularly, are often expected to discharge elevated levels of emotive labor both in the professional realm and in their personal lives, as societal conventions frequently attribute greater significance to emotional expressiveness and nurturant roles for women.

Mitigating the challenges posed by emotive labor necessitates concerted efforts on both organizational and individual fronts. Employers wield considerable influence in recognizing the emotional exigencies borne by their staff and furnishing support through training initiatives, counseling services, and fostering a corporate ethos that prizes emotional well-being. By acknowledging the import of emotive labor, organizations can institute policies that alleviate superfluous emotional strain, such as establishing pragmatic anticipations for patron interactions and advocating for a salubrious equilibrium between professional and personal realms.

On an individual plane, cultivating emotional intelligence and embracing self-care modalities can facilitate the management of emotive labor’s demands. Emotional intelligence encompasses the capacity to discern, comprehend, and regulate one’s own emotions, as well as empathize with the emotions of others. By honing these proficiencies, individuals can navigate emotive labor more adeptly and ameliorate its adverse repercussions. Self-care practices, including mindfulness, physical exercise, and seeking communal support, can also furnish vital outlets for processing emotions and ameliorating stress levels.

In summation, emotive labor constitutes a pivotal yet often overlooked facet of myriad professional and personal roles. It necessitates the regulation of emotions to meet institutional and societal expectations, with momentous implications for individuals’ cognitive and affective well-being. By acknowledging the demands of emotive labor and implementing supportive measures, both organizations and individuals can engender milieus that foster emotional resilience and sustainable performance. Comprehending and addressing the intricacies of emotive labor is indispensable for promoting a more salubrious and balanced approach to vocation and life.

It’s paramount to bear in mind that this treatise serves as a catalyst for contemplation and further exploration. For bespoke guidance and adherence to academic standards, ponder engaging with professionals at EduBirdie.

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How to prepare to write an essay, how to edit an essay, how to share and publish your essays, how to get essay writing help, how to find essay writing inspiration, resources for teaching essay writing.

Essays, short prose compositions on a particular theme or topic, are the bread and butter of academic life. You write them in class, for homework, and on standardized tests to show what you know. Unlike other kinds of academic writing (like the research paper) and creative writing (like short stories and poems), essays allow you to develop your original thoughts on a prompt or question. Essays come in many varieties: they can be expository (fleshing out an idea or claim), descriptive, (explaining a person, place, or thing), narrative (relating a personal experience), or persuasive (attempting to win over a reader). This guide is a collection of dozens of links about academic essay writing that we have researched, categorized, and annotated in order to help you improve your essay writing.

Essays are different from other forms of writing; in turn, there are different kinds of essays. This section contains general resources for getting to know the essay and its variants. These resources introduce and define the essay as a genre, and will teach you what to expect from essay-based assessments.

Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab

One of the most trusted academic writing sites, Purdue OWL provides a concise introduction to the four most common types of academic essays.

"The Essay: History and Definition" (ThoughtCo)

This snappy article from ThoughtCo talks about the origins of the essay and different kinds of essays you might be asked to write.

"What Is An Essay?" Video Lecture (Coursera)

The University of California at Irvine's free video lecture, available on Coursera, tells you everything you need to know about the essay.

Wikipedia Article on the "Essay"

Wikipedia's article on the essay is comprehensive, providing both English-language and global perspectives on the essay form. Learn about the essay's history, forms, and styles.

"Understanding College and Academic Writing" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This list of common academic writing assignments (including types of essay prompts) will help you know what to expect from essay-based assessments.

Before you start writing your essay, you need to figure out who you're writing for (audience), what you're writing about (topic/theme), and what you're going to say (argument and thesis). This section contains links to handouts, chapters, videos and more to help you prepare to write an essay.

How to Identify Your Audience

"Audience" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This handout provides questions you can ask yourself to determine the audience for an academic writing assignment. It also suggests strategies for fitting your paper to your intended audience.

"Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content" (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries)

This extensive book chapter from Writing for Success , available online through Minnesota Libraries Publishing, is followed by exercises to try out your new pre-writing skills.

"Determining Audience" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This guide from a community college's writing center shows you how to know your audience, and how to incorporate that knowledge in your thesis statement.

"Know Your Audience" ( Paper Rater Blog)

This short blog post uses examples to show how implied audiences for essays differ. It reminds you to think of your instructor as an observer, who will know only the information you pass along.

How to Choose a Theme or Topic

"Research Tutorial: Developing Your Topic" (YouTube)

Take a look at this short video tutorial from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to understand the basics of developing a writing topic.

"How to Choose a Paper Topic" (WikiHow)

This simple, step-by-step guide (with pictures!) walks you through choosing a paper topic. It starts with a detailed description of brainstorming and ends with strategies to refine your broad topic.

"How to Read an Assignment: Moving From Assignment to Topic" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Did your teacher give you a prompt or other instructions? This guide helps you understand the relationship between an essay assignment and your essay's topic.

"Guidelines for Choosing a Topic" (CliffsNotes)

This study guide from CliffsNotes both discusses how to choose a topic and makes a useful distinction between "topic" and "thesis."

How to Come Up with an Argument

"Argument" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

Not sure what "argument" means in the context of academic writing? This page from the University of North Carolina is a good place to start.

"The Essay Guide: Finding an Argument" (Study Hub)

This handout explains why it's important to have an argument when beginning your essay, and provides tools to help you choose a viable argument.

"Writing a Thesis and Making an Argument" (University of Iowa)

This page from the University of Iowa's Writing Center contains exercises through which you can develop and refine your argument and thesis statement.

"Developing a Thesis" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This page from Harvard's Writing Center collates some helpful dos and don'ts of argumentative writing, from steps in constructing a thesis to avoiding vague and confrontational thesis statements.

"Suggestions for Developing Argumentative Essays" (Berkeley Student Learning Center)

This page offers concrete suggestions for each stage of the essay writing process, from topic selection to drafting and editing.

How to Outline your Essay

"Outlines" (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill via YouTube)

This short video tutorial from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows how to group your ideas into paragraphs or sections to begin the outlining process.

"Essay Outline" (Univ. of Washington Tacoma)

This two-page handout by a university professor simply defines the parts of an essay and then organizes them into an example outline.

"Types of Outlines and Samples" (Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab)

Purdue OWL gives examples of diverse outline strategies on this page, including the alphanumeric, full sentence, and decimal styles.

"Outlining" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Once you have an argument, according to this handout, there are only three steps in the outline process: generalizing, ordering, and putting it all together. Then you're ready to write!

"Writing Essays" (Plymouth Univ.)

This packet, part of Plymouth University's Learning Development series, contains descriptions and diagrams relating to the outlining process.

"How to Write A Good Argumentative Essay: Logical Structure" (Criticalthinkingtutorials.com via YouTube)

This longer video tutorial gives an overview of how to structure your essay in order to support your argument or thesis. It is part of a longer course on academic writing hosted on Udemy.

Now that you've chosen and refined your topic and created an outline, use these resources to complete the writing process. Most essays contain introductions (which articulate your thesis statement), body paragraphs, and conclusions. Transitions facilitate the flow from one paragraph to the next so that support for your thesis builds throughout the essay. Sources and citations show where you got the evidence to support your thesis, which ensures that you avoid plagiarism.

How to Write an Introduction

"Introductions" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page identifies the role of the introduction in any successful paper, suggests strategies for writing introductions, and warns against less effective introductions.

"How to Write A Good Introduction" (Michigan State Writing Center)

Beginning with the most common missteps in writing introductions, this guide condenses the essentials of introduction composition into seven points.

"The Introductory Paragraph" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post from academic advisor and college enrollment counselor Grace Fleming focuses on ways to grab your reader's attention at the beginning of your essay.

"Introductions and Conclusions" (Univ. of Toronto)

This guide from the University of Toronto gives advice that applies to writing both introductions and conclusions, including dos and don'ts.

"How to Write Better Essays: No One Does Introductions Properly" ( The Guardian )

This news article interviews UK professors on student essay writing; they point to introductions as the area that needs the most improvement.

How to Write a Thesis Statement

"Writing an Effective Thesis Statement" (YouTube)

This short, simple video tutorial from a college composition instructor at Tulsa Community College explains what a thesis statement is and what it does.

"Thesis Statement: Four Steps to a Great Essay" (YouTube)

This fantastic tutorial walks you through drafting a thesis, using an essay prompt on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as an example.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement" (WikiHow)

This step-by-step guide (with pictures!) walks you through coming up with, writing, and editing a thesis statement. It invites you think of your statement as a "working thesis" that can change.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement" (Univ. of Indiana Bloomington)

Ask yourself the questions on this page, part of Indiana Bloomington's Writing Tutorial Services, when you're writing and refining your thesis statement.

"Writing Tips: Thesis Statements" (Univ. of Illinois Center for Writing Studies)

This page gives plentiful examples of good to great thesis statements, and offers questions to ask yourself when formulating a thesis statement.

How to Write Body Paragraphs

"Body Paragraph" (Brightstorm)

This module of a free online course introduces you to the components of a body paragraph. These include the topic sentence, information, evidence, and analysis.

"Strong Body Paragraphs" (Washington Univ.)

This handout from Washington's Writing and Research Center offers in-depth descriptions of the parts of a successful body paragraph.

"Guide to Paragraph Structure" (Deakin Univ.)

This handout is notable for color-coding example body paragraphs to help you identify the functions various sentences perform.

"Writing Body Paragraphs" (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries)

The exercises in this section of Writing for Success will help you practice writing good body paragraphs. It includes guidance on selecting primary support for your thesis.

"The Writing Process—Body Paragraphs" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

The information and exercises on this page will familiarize you with outlining and writing body paragraphs, and includes links to more information on topic sentences and transitions.

"The Five-Paragraph Essay" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post discusses body paragraphs in the context of one of the most common academic essay types in secondary schools.

How to Use Transitions

"Transitions" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill explains what a transition is, and how to know if you need to improve your transitions.

"Using Transitions Effectively" (Washington Univ.)

This handout defines transitions, offers tips for using them, and contains a useful list of common transitional words and phrases grouped by function.

"Transitions" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This page compares paragraphs without transitions to paragraphs with transitions, and in doing so shows how important these connective words and phrases are.

"Transitions in Academic Essays" (Scribbr)

This page lists four techniques that will help you make sure your reader follows your train of thought, including grouping similar information and using transition words.

"Transitions" (El Paso Community College)

This handout shows example transitions within paragraphs for context, and explains how transitions improve your essay's flow and voice.

"Make Your Paragraphs Flow to Improve Writing" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post, another from academic advisor and college enrollment counselor Grace Fleming, talks about transitions and other strategies to improve your essay's overall flow.

"Transition Words" (smartwords.org)

This handy word bank will help you find transition words when you're feeling stuck. It's grouped by the transition's function, whether that is to show agreement, opposition, condition, or consequence.

How to Write a Conclusion

"Parts of An Essay: Conclusions" (Brightstorm)

This module of a free online course explains how to conclude an academic essay. It suggests thinking about the "3Rs": return to hook, restate your thesis, and relate to the reader.

"Essay Conclusions" (Univ. of Maryland University College)

This overview of the academic essay conclusion contains helpful examples and links to further resources for writing good conclusions.

"How to End An Essay" (WikiHow)

This step-by-step guide (with pictures!) by an English Ph.D. walks you through writing a conclusion, from brainstorming to ending with a flourish.

"Ending the Essay: Conclusions" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This page collates useful strategies for writing an effective conclusion, and reminds you to "close the discussion without closing it off" to further conversation.

How to Include Sources and Citations

"Research and Citation Resources" (Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab)

Purdue OWL streamlines information about the three most common referencing styles (MLA, Chicago, and APA) and provides examples of how to cite different resources in each system.

EasyBib: Free Bibliography Generator

This online tool allows you to input information about your source and automatically generate citations in any style. Be sure to select your resource type before clicking the "cite it" button.

CitationMachine

Like EasyBib, this online tool allows you to input information about your source and automatically generate citations in any style.

Modern Language Association Handbook (MLA)

Here, you'll find the definitive and up-to-date record of MLA referencing rules. Order through the link above, or check to see if your library has a copy.

Chicago Manual of Style

Here, you'll find the definitive and up-to-date record of Chicago referencing rules. You can take a look at the table of contents, then choose to subscribe or start a free trial.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

"What is Plagiarism?" (plagiarism.org)

This nonprofit website contains numerous resources for identifying and avoiding plagiarism, and reminds you that even common activities like copying images from another website to your own site may constitute plagiarism.

"Plagiarism" (University of Oxford)

This interactive page from the University of Oxford helps you check for plagiarism in your work, making it clear how to avoid citing another person's work without full acknowledgement.

"Avoiding Plagiarism" (MIT Comparative Media Studies)

This quick guide explains what plagiarism is, what its consequences are, and how to avoid it. It starts by defining three words—quotation, paraphrase, and summary—that all constitute citation.

"Harvard Guide to Using Sources" (Harvard Extension School)

This comprehensive website from Harvard brings together articles, videos, and handouts about referencing, citation, and plagiarism.

Grammarly contains tons of helpful grammar and writing resources, including a free tool to automatically scan your essay to check for close affinities to published work.

Noplag is another popular online tool that automatically scans your essay to check for signs of plagiarism. Simply copy and paste your essay into the box and click "start checking."

Once you've written your essay, you'll want to edit (improve content), proofread (check for spelling and grammar mistakes), and finalize your work until you're ready to hand it in. This section brings together tips and resources for navigating the editing process.

"Writing a First Draft" (Academic Help)

This is an introduction to the drafting process from the site Academic Help, with tips for getting your ideas on paper before editing begins.

"Editing and Proofreading" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page provides general strategies for revising your writing. They've intentionally left seven errors in the handout, to give you practice in spotting them.

"How to Proofread Effectively" (ThoughtCo)

This article from ThoughtCo, along with those linked at the bottom, help describe common mistakes to check for when proofreading.

"7 Simple Edits That Make Your Writing 100% More Powerful" (SmartBlogger)

This blog post emphasizes the importance of powerful, concise language, and reminds you that even your personal writing heroes create clunky first drafts.

"Editing Tips for Effective Writing" (Univ. of Pennsylvania)

On this page from Penn's International Relations department, you'll find tips for effective prose, errors to watch out for, and reminders about formatting.

"Editing the Essay" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This article, the first of two parts, gives you applicable strategies for the editing process. It suggests reading your essay aloud, removing any jargon, and being unafraid to remove even "dazzling" sentences that don't belong.

"Guide to Editing and Proofreading" (Oxford Learning Institute)

This handout from Oxford covers the basics of editing and proofreading, and reminds you that neither task should be rushed.

In addition to plagiarism-checkers, Grammarly has a plug-in for your web browser that checks your writing for common mistakes.

After you've prepared, written, and edited your essay, you might want to share it outside the classroom. This section alerts you to print and web opportunities to share your essays with the wider world, from online writing communities and blogs to published journals geared toward young writers.

Sharing Your Essays Online

Go Teen Writers

Go Teen Writers is an online community for writers aged 13 - 19. It was founded by Stephanie Morrill, an author of contemporary young adult novels.

Tumblr is a blogging website where you can share your writing and interact with other writers online. It's easy to add photos, links, audio, and video components.

Writersky provides an online platform for publishing and reading other youth writers' work. Its current content is mostly devoted to fiction.

Publishing Your Essays Online

This teen literary journal publishes in print, on the web, and (more frequently), on a blog. It is committed to ensuring that "teens see their authentic experience reflected on its pages."

The Matador Review

This youth writing platform celebrates "alternative," unconventional writing. The link above will take you directly to the site's "submissions" page.

Teen Ink has a website, monthly newsprint magazine, and quarterly poetry magazine promoting the work of young writers.

The largest online reading platform, Wattpad enables you to publish your work and read others' work. Its inline commenting feature allows you to share thoughts as you read along.

Publishing Your Essays in Print

Canvas Teen Literary Journal

This quarterly literary magazine is published for young writers by young writers. They accept many kinds of writing, including essays.

The Claremont Review

This biannual international magazine, first published in 1992, publishes poetry, essays, and short stories from writers aged 13 - 19.

Skipping Stones

This young writers magazine, founded in 1988, celebrates themes relating to ecological and cultural diversity. It publishes poems, photos, articles, and stories.

The Telling Room

This nonprofit writing center based in Maine publishes children's work on their website and in book form. The link above directs you to the site's submissions page.

Essay Contests

Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards

This prestigious international writing contest for students in grades 7 - 12 has been committed to "supporting the future of creativity since 1923."

Society of Professional Journalists High School Essay Contest

An annual essay contest on the theme of journalism and media, the Society of Professional Journalists High School Essay Contest awards scholarships up to $1,000.

National YoungArts Foundation

Here, you'll find information on a government-sponsored writing competition for writers aged 15 - 18. The foundation welcomes submissions of creative nonfiction, novels, scripts, poetry, short story and spoken word.

Signet Classics Student Scholarship Essay Contest

With prompts on a different literary work each year, this competition from Signet Classics awards college scholarships up to $1,000.

"The Ultimate Guide to High School Essay Contests" (CollegeVine)

See this handy guide from CollegeVine for a list of more competitions you can enter with your academic essay, from the National Council of Teachers of English Achievement Awards to the National High School Essay Contest by the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Whether you're struggling to write academic essays or you think you're a pro, there are workshops and online tools that can help you become an even better writer. Even the most seasoned writers encounter writer's block, so be proactive and look through our curated list of resources to combat this common frustration.

Online Essay-writing Classes and Workshops

"Getting Started with Essay Writing" (Coursera)

Coursera offers lots of free, high-quality online classes taught by college professors. Here's one example, taught by instructors from the University of California Irvine.

"Writing and English" (Brightstorm)

Brightstorm's free video lectures are easy to navigate by topic. This unit on the parts of an essay features content on the essay hook, thesis, supporting evidence, and more.

"How to Write an Essay" (EdX)

EdX is another open online university course website with several two- to five-week courses on the essay. This one is geared toward English language learners.

Writer's Digest University

This renowned writers' website offers online workshops and interactive tutorials. The courses offered cover everything from how to get started through how to get published.

Writing.com

Signing up for this online writer's community gives you access to helpful resources as well as an international community of writers.

How to Overcome Writer's Block

"Symptoms and Cures for Writer's Block" (Purdue OWL)

Purdue OWL offers a list of signs you might have writer's block, along with ways to overcome it. Consider trying out some "invention strategies" or ways to curb writing anxiety.

"Overcoming Writer's Block: Three Tips" ( The Guardian )

These tips, geared toward academic writing specifically, are practical and effective. The authors advocate setting realistic goals, creating dedicated writing time, and participating in social writing.

"Writing Tips: Strategies for Overcoming Writer's Block" (Univ. of Illinois)

This page from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Center for Writing Studies acquaints you with strategies that do and do not work to overcome writer's block.

"Writer's Block" (Univ. of Toronto)

Ask yourself the questions on this page; if the answer is "yes," try out some of the article's strategies. Each question is accompanied by at least two possible solutions.

If you have essays to write but are short on ideas, this section's links to prompts, example student essays, and celebrated essays by professional writers might help. You'll find writing prompts from a variety of sources, student essays to inspire you, and a number of essay writing collections.

Essay Writing Prompts

"50 Argumentative Essay Topics" (ThoughtCo)

Take a look at this list and the others ThoughtCo has curated for different kinds of essays. As the author notes, "a number of these topics are controversial and that's the point."

"401 Prompts for Argumentative Writing" ( New York Times )

This list (and the linked lists to persuasive and narrative writing prompts), besides being impressive in length, is put together by actual high school English teachers.

"SAT Sample Essay Prompts" (College Board)

If you're a student in the U.S., your classroom essay prompts are likely modeled on the prompts in U.S. college entrance exams. Take a look at these official examples from the SAT.

"Popular College Application Essay Topics" (Princeton Review)

This page from the Princeton Review dissects recent Common Application essay topics and discusses strategies for answering them.

Example Student Essays

"501 Writing Prompts" (DePaul Univ.)

This nearly 200-page packet, compiled by the LearningExpress Skill Builder in Focus Writing Team, is stuffed with writing prompts, example essays, and commentary.

"Topics in English" (Kibin)

Kibin is a for-pay essay help website, but its example essays (organized by topic) are available for free. You'll find essays on everything from A Christmas Carol to perseverance.

"Student Writing Models" (Thoughtful Learning)

Thoughtful Learning, a website that offers a variety of teaching materials, provides sample student essays on various topics and organizes them by grade level.

"Five-Paragraph Essay" (ThoughtCo)

In this blog post by a former professor of English and rhetoric, ThoughtCo brings together examples of five-paragraph essays and commentary on the form.

The Best Essay Writing Collections

The Best American Essays of the Century by Joyce Carol Oates (Amazon)

This collection of American essays spanning the twentieth century was compiled by award winning author and Princeton professor Joyce Carol Oates.

The Best American Essays 2017 by Leslie Jamison (Amazon)

Leslie Jamison, the celebrated author of essay collection The Empathy Exams , collects recent, high-profile essays into a single volume.

The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate (Amazon)

Documentary writer Phillip Lopate curates this historical overview of the personal essay's development, from the classical era to the present.

The White Album by Joan Didion (Amazon)

This seminal essay collection was authored by one of the most acclaimed personal essayists of all time, American journalist Joan Didion.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace (Amazon)

Read this famous essay collection by David Foster Wallace, who is known for his experimentation with the essay form. He pushed the boundaries of personal essay, reportage, and political polemic.

"50 Successful Harvard Application Essays" (Staff of the The Harvard Crimson )

If you're looking for examples of exceptional college application essays, this volume from Harvard's daily student newspaper is one of the best collections on the market.

Are you an instructor looking for the best resources for teaching essay writing? This section contains resources for developing in-class activities and student homework assignments. You'll find content from both well-known university writing centers and online writing labs.

Essay Writing Classroom Activities for Students

"In-class Writing Exercises" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page lists exercises related to brainstorming, organizing, drafting, and revising. It also contains suggestions for how to implement the suggested exercises.

"Teaching with Writing" (Univ. of Minnesota Center for Writing)

Instructions and encouragement for using "freewriting," one-minute papers, logbooks, and other write-to-learn activities in the classroom can be found here.

"Writing Worksheets" (Berkeley Student Learning Center)

Berkeley offers this bank of writing worksheets to use in class. They are nested under headings for "Prewriting," "Revision," "Research Papers" and more.

"Using Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism" (DePaul University)

Use these activities and worksheets from DePaul's Teaching Commons when instructing students on proper academic citation practices.

Essay Writing Homework Activities for Students

"Grammar and Punctuation Exercises" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

These five interactive online activities allow students to practice editing and proofreading. They'll hone their skills in correcting comma splices and run-ons, identifying fragments, using correct pronoun agreement, and comma usage.

"Student Interactives" (Read Write Think)

Read Write Think hosts interactive tools, games, and videos for developing writing skills. They can practice organizing and summarizing, writing poetry, and developing lines of inquiry and analysis.

This free website offers writing and grammar activities for all grade levels. The lessons are designed to be used both for large classes and smaller groups.

"Writing Activities and Lessons for Every Grade" (Education World)

Education World's page on writing activities and lessons links you to more free, online resources for learning how to "W.R.I.T.E.": write, revise, inform, think, and edit.

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Writing as a Vocation? by Beth Barany

by Beth Barany · Published May 22, 2019 · Updated May 22, 2019

In a previous blog post here https://writersfunzone.com/blog/2019/05/02/write-to-market-by-beth-barany/ , I shared about my rumination on writing to market or not.

I don’t think it’s wrong or bad to write to market. I just don’t do it as a top motivator.

I’ve heard from several of you on your point of view on this issue — thank you so much — and so I wanted to flush out another way of looking at writing fiction.

Some of you said that it was more a hobby than a profession.

What is a Vocation?

I want to honor how seriously you take your hobby. It is more like a vocation, a calling, a way of being in the world, a way of expressing who you are to yourself, to others, and to the next generations to come.

A vocation it’s not something we talk about much in our culture, but my father talked about it with us.

He had many vocations (technically “avocations,” but I’ll get to that in a moment). My father studied philosophy, the meaning of life stuff, did weaving, loved and served his own gourmet cooking, and played the Japanese bamboo flute. He also loved gathering herbs and wild crafting. He made us home remedies from what he gathered (rose hip tea!) when we were sick from the time I was little.

My father passed away last January 2018, but I think a lot about his vocations. He pursued these things because he loved them. He would even give gifts of his weaving and gift his time and energy with his cooking.

Not that we need to gift and give away our writing. That was his choice.

And yes, I wish he could have modeled the business side of one’s vocation (but he didn’t know how, and that’s okay), but I am really glad that he modeled passion and the pursuit of something because he loved it.

Definitions of Vocation

According to Grammarist , “A vocation is a calling, an occupation, or a large undertaking for which one is especially suited. It can be roughly synonymous with career or profession, though vocation connotes a seriousness or a commitment that these words don’t always bear. An avocation is something done in addition to one’s vocation—usually a hobby.”

Yet, Merriam-Webster Dictionary makes “avocation” synonymous with “vocation.” Go figure.

Whether you pursue writing fiction as an avocation or vocation, a hobby or profession, or something in between (or yes — all of the above!), I celebrate your passion and your love of the art and craft.

Until next time!

Yes, please, share your thoughts with me on these topics. I love hearing from you and I respond to every email and comment I get, though it may take me a few days.

Want to get started with your novel? Check out our book, Plan Your Novel Like A Pro here: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/plan-your-novel-like-a-pro-and-have-fun-doing-it/ .

ABOUT BETH BARANY

She’s also the author of books for writers, including Plan Your Novel Like A Pro , cowritten with her husband, thriller writer Ezra Barany.

Connect with Beth via her blog, Writer’s Fun Zone. Twitter: @Beth_Barany . Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bethbarany . Instagram: https://instagram.com/bethbarany/

Tags: Beth Barany vocation writer career

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Home / Essay Samples / Life / Work / Vocation

Vocation Essay Examples

Vocation and destiny in you are what you love.

James Smith in the text, “You are What You Love,” offers a reader a friendly start to the extensive Augustinian insights by stating that people’s acts are shaped by what they mostly love than by what they mostly think or do. Therefore, if virtues and...

Pursuing My Vocation: How I Chose to Study Wildlife Biology

As a child, I was always drawn to the beauty of nature and the wonder of the animal kingdom. I chose to write about my vocation for this essay as my fascination with the natural world grew stronger as I grew older, and I began...

The Views of Martin Luther on Vocation

Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a highly influential German theologian and religious reformer whose impact caused him to become the catalyst of the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Luther’s aim was to disarm legalism; to take the power that was reserved for 'higher' people on the religious...

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