When I teach in college classrooms, many students are there to check a box. They need this course to meet the requirements for their degree.
So many people are going through life checking boxes. This is the time of year when many have just checked another box. They graduated from high school or college and now will look for a job.
I was raised in a different environment by my parents. My father had been checking boxes his life until one night in college, he found himself on his knees praying to God and felt God was asking him to change direction.
Vocation means a strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or occupation. Calling is a synonym for the word.
In some of the classes I have taught in college, I found students just trying to meet the minimums. I don’t mean minimum like passing, but rather what are the requirements for an “A” and then proceed to do just enough to get the “A.”
“Mastery is not a commitment to a goal but to a constant pursuit. What gets us to do this, what get us to forward thrust more is to value the near win. How many times have we designated something a classic, a masterpiece even, while its creator considers it hopelessly unfinished, riddled with difficulties and flaws, in other words, a near win?”
Sarah Lewis
Whether your goal is to work for National Geographic as a photojournalist or to get to the finish line of a marathon, write a book, find a partner, be a good parent or a good friend, the feeling of success and satisfaction can be found in the process, not the accomplishment.
This is key to being a successful storyteller focused on the process rather than the checkbox.
| Process | Checkbox |
| Wants to know the subject | Wants to get the content |
| Arrives Early | Arrives on time |
| Leaves Late | Leaves Early |
| Extremely Curious | Indifferent, Uninterested, Average |
95% of people who go to Yellowstone National park use only 5% of the park. It has been reported that 90% of the visitors never leave the road, and 95% never venture more than 100 feet off the pavement.
I consider those the box checkers. They have been to Yellowstone.
“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.”
Greg Anderson
Know Your “Why?”
As some might say, having a vocation or calling is being mission-minded. You are pursuing something. I believe my calling is to get to know the people God has put in my life. To develop relationships with these people and get to know them.
When I get to know someone, I learn how I can serve them.
College
Too many people go to college to get a degree, and not enough go to college to learn a subject. I want an engineer who understands physics that builds the bridge I will drive on. I don’t like the engineer who checked off they took the class.
At Georgia Tech, I was in a Civil Engineering class where the students built a bridge out of balsa wood that the professor had given them. The bridge would be tested to see if it held a certain weight.
Little did they know, but the professor gave them faulty plans. They were to check the design and build it. The lesson wasn’t the building of the invention but rather the ability to think and go back to the professor telling him that the design was flawed. This is a real-world example.
Many of the students failed that assignment that day. They were box checkers. Those who loved learning and were there for the process found the mistake and passed.