Timothy Kirchoff

I’m one of those seniors who still doesn’t have concrete plans for after graduation, but those who know me well most likely saw that problem coming from a mile away. I’ve never been one to plan my life out in advance. I’ve always been more concerned about figuring out the next week or month than the next four years, much less the rest of my life. Perhaps, then, it is ironic that I should have ended up as Director of Rodzinka, a student group dedicated to promoting on-campus discussion of healthy relationships, marriage and family life. There couldn’t be a sharper contrast between me and the previous two directors of the club in this respect: both of them, when they took on the responsibilities of leadership, knew that they would soon have the opportunity to put what they learned through the club to good use in their own impending marriages, whereas I had never so much as gone on a date; I had no interest in preparing for marriage because I had never thought far enough ahead for the question to seriously present itself in my mind.

So how did I end up on the leadership track for a club with such a narrow vocational focus when I had yet to make even minimal progress in my own vocational discernment? Step by unintentional step. I started out simply by attending the meetings, mostly because I enjoyed the company and the format: A professor would share experiences and advice about marriage and family life over an informal dinner-discussion. Part of me enjoyed interacting with professors outside of a classroom setting, and part of me simply enjoyed the company of the sort of people that event attracted. Despite the fact that I did not have a particularly strong interest in the club’s subject matter, I decided that I was nonetheless a part of the club community, and that I was therefore willing to help out in any way I could.

In the spring of my sophomore year, “helping out in any way I could” included identifying and inviting a speaker to fill in for another who had cancelled, and when that event turned out well, I was put in charge of inviting most of the speakers for the next semester. The next year, when the then-director was preparing for graduation, I was the person most familiar with the fundraising, planning and advertising process for the club’s dinner-discussion series, so I found myself taking on the directorship, and with it, primary responsibility for the club for the next year.

Taking charge of a club when I had so little understanding of the sheer importance of its mission had what might be called interesting results: although I did not have a very clear sense of the questions the club ought to discuss and therefore made some missteps—not least in the process of inviting speakers. This knowledge of my relative ignorance led me to depend more on the feedback of the other club members, which in turn probably led to more interesting discussions than if I had gone entirely based off of my own nascent questions about the challenges and rewards of marriage and family life. Furthermore, I came to a better appreciation of the fact that a club is not defined by its events, but by its community: The more I let perspectives other than my own inform my leadership, the more everyone took away from the events, and the more people invested themselves in the club’s ongoing conversation.

I don’t always anticipate all of the consequences of the commitments I make. For example, when I promised my friend Michael that I would write a column for the next edition of the Rover, I didn’t expect that it would lead to me staying up until 2 a.m. for two consecutive nights writing and re-writing it. I did not anticipate when I first started volunteering at Knights of Columbus steak sales that my willingness to help in the absence of any better idea of how to spend my football Saturdays would be mistaken for leadership potential and that I would end up as Deputy Grand Knight my junior year. I certainly did not think when I started attending Rodzinka’s dinner-discussions that I would ever invite speakers for it, much less take on the responsibility of planning an entire year’s worth of dinners.

I certainly don’t resent being entrusted with these responsibilities, however—I have learned immeasurably from them. I have learned a great deal about my strengths and weaknesses as a leader, particularly with respect to building an environment in which people are comfortable expressing their desires and opinions freely. Moreover, each meeting over the course of the last four years added something to my understanding of the burdens and benefits of marriage and family life. I still don’t know whether or not I’m called to marriage (much less to whom), partly because I’m still not very good at looking that far ahead, but I have nonetheless gained a great deal of wisdom by taking on a leadership position that was so far outside of my comfort zone and initial expectations.

 

Tim Kirchoff is a senior with more than a few extra flex points. If you’d like to help him spend some, contact him at tkirchof@nd.edu.