It comes with the territory of being a senior in college, and I have been advised to prepare for it since I was first a freshman here at Notre Dame.  As a senior, you constantly field the question, “What are you doing after graduation?”  It is the basic social instinct for any conversation in which you might engage.  It is the same basic social instinct that earlier in my college career led people to ask me what my major was.

When you’re a senior, everyone wants to know the practical particulars of your plans after finishing college, but I find that most people stop before they ask what your personal life aspirations are that lead you to taking that next step after college.  Surely there must be something more to post-graduation plans than the practical next step you have chosen from the options presented to you.

For example, why is your friend down the hall taking that accounting job offered to him?  There are endless possibilities.  To name a few, there is the postgraduate accountant who loves the work and wants to take it up as his career, the accountant who is not sure what he will do for a career yet and thought the job might be a good first opportunity, and even the accountant who simply took the job because he wants to pay off his college debt before moving to Wyoming to live off the land.

Yet we often do not put in the effort to get to know those around us beyond asking what their immediate career plans might be.  Maybe we think knowing someone’s next step is enough to know them well; maybe we don’t want to share our personal thoughts with those around us; or maybe we barely think past our next career moves when we consider our life aspirations.

Whatever the case may be, I think our society today links identity too much with one’s chosen career path.  A career is a very personal decision that I believe we all (rightly) take seriously, but a career is only one part of a person’s complex and multifaceted life.  We should always view our identities and lives as something incomprehensibly greater than our planned (or uncertain) career paths.  We should always pursue our careers in relation to the greater life aspirations that we hold.  But, now, how should we discern our life ambitions?

This question relates closely to the Christian idea of vocation.  I am not talking about a narrow view of vocation that limits vocational discernment to the primary Catholic states of life—priesthood, religious life, lay life—although that discernment is indispensable in considering your life plans.  I am talking about the more fundamental Christian view of vocation as what God is calling you to do with your life.  As Blessed John Henry Newman said, “I am created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created; I have a place in God’s counsels, in God’s world, which no one else has … God knows me and calls me by name.”  True happiness in life comes from pursuing your vocation as the will of God, who created you and knows you better than you know yourself.

In considering our postgraduate career plans and discussing them with our friends, we seniors should consider first what God is calling us to do with our lives and second how we can work towards that in our careers.  Your vocation in the Church and in the world is one of a life of service that you will hopefully realize in and through your career, but not as your career itself.  For example, your life’s vocation is not fulfilled simply by being a doctor but by selflessly serving others in your role as a doctor, and all the specific roles to which you are called, be that as a spouse, parent, or friend.

Let us, then, seek first God’s will in our lives.  To this end, I have never come across greater life advice than from the lady that this school was named after, Mary, at the Annunciation: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word.”  If I am to seek the true happiness for which I was created, let this be my life’s mission.

Marco Cerritelli is a senior theology and philosophy major who resides in St. Edward’s Hall.  Ask about his vocation at mcerrite@nd.edu.  But please, do not ask him about his plans for next year.