What's your life mission?

In 6th grade, I realized that the small town I grew up in was not where I wanted to live for the rest of my life. As I recall, I had returned from visiting a friend and by the time I got home, someone had already called my mom to tell her I had walked downtown with a friend and we had talked to some boys. This was not the first time someone had called my mother reporting my innocent and ordinary activities. I remember thinking that I did not want to live my life—even as uneventful as it was—under a microscope. It didn’t occur to me to “sneak around,” so for about a decade my personal mission was to get out of the town I grew up in. I started paying attention to girls in high school to figure out who left town and how. From what I could see, the only option open to me was to go to college.
      I made choices that put me on that path. In junior high school, I participated in an accelerated after-school program. It took a lot of time and I discovered how little I knew about current events, but it was what kids on the college path were doing. When my parents insisted I do the business track in high school (i.e. secretarial training) instead of college prep, I would not back down from my desire to do the college prep track. I needed one of their signatures, so when I couldn’t dissuade them, I offered a compromise which they accepted—I would take typing while also doing the college prep track. When in high school, I got good grades and joined clubs that seemed relevant for college (e.g. French, Latin, high school newspaper). In my senior year, my purpose influenced many decisions. For example, Kent State University accepted not only me, but two of my friends. My friends assumed the three of us would be roommates and come home together on the weekends. I said, “no.” Clinging to my goal to leave my hometown, I didn’t bend to their pressure. I believed that if I roomed with them that I would be doomed to living in a fishbowl and never move beyond my hometown. Getting out of my hometown was my touchstone throughout college and my first semester of graduate school.[1]
     Before I started my second semester of graduate school, I made a list of what had become other priorities in my life: ending racism and poverty, cleaning up the environment, and stopping the war in Vietnam. I remember the list because a few days later I added a new item that reshaped this laundry list of social ills into a new life mission.
      I was enrolled in Thomas Lough’s Social Conflict course at Kent State University. Tom asked the 30 of us gathered in the room to introduce ourselves and identify the social conflict that most interested us. Because of the seating arrangement, I was the last to introduce myself. Before we were even halfway around the room, others had mentioned and still others had repeated “my interests”. Tom was the inspiration for me to apply to graduate school[2] and I did not want to begin my first graduate class with him by repeating what other people had already said. As I listened to others’ introductions, I struggled to think of something I could say that would be meaningful but not a repetition. What floated into my head as I began to speak was an article I had read the previous fall in Life Magazine about the 1969 protest of the Miss American beauty pageant. I said, “conflict between men and women.”
     At the end of class, Tom said, “come with me.” He ran and I followed, running through the hall and down the stairs to a small room in the basement where he introduced me to Elaine Wellin. Elaine was organizing a women’s liberation meeting on the Kent State campus. When Tom told her I was interested in the women’s liberation movement, Elaine quickly put me to work collating materials for the meeting. I was too timid to say I didn’t know what they were talking about, so I stayed to help. By the time I left that evening, I was looking at the world through new eyes. My life mission had shifted from getting out of my hometown to women’s liberation.

What is a life mission?
People use many different words to describe having a personal mission, such as, calling, charge, compass, cornerstone, direction, foundation, guidepost, mission, principle, purpose, reference point, rudder, standard, touchstone. The scope of a life mission can range from large scale (e.g. attain world peace, end world hunger, end human trafficking) to a more intimate scale (e.g. be kind to others, minimize one’s impact on the environment, be fully present in each moment). Like we saw in my opening story, a life mission is not static and is likely to change overtime and new situations, but in any given moment, it can provide a touchstone for making decisions and choices in the face of chaos, competing demands, conflict, confusion, silence, social change, and social upheaval.
     Our social locations and social circumstances affect our choices and affect what and how many choices we may have in any given circumstances. Even in constrained circumstances, however, living without a touchstone means we are particularly susceptible to others’ demands, institutional expectations, and making choices based on what is convenient, popular, or least risky rather than considering what we value, believe, or want. Having a purpose gives us a criterion for making choices and decisions. Knowing your life purpose will help you decide, among many other things, whether or not being a professor is for you and, if so, what kind of professor you want to be.

Forming your life mission
     If you already know your life mission, express it in 1-5 sentences. If you are still in the discovery phase, try starting by doing something like I did above. Write a page or two about life events or circumstances that have shaped decisions and choices you have made to bring you to where you are now. Even if your statement doesn’t reveal a life mission for now, it will give you a start. If that doesn't work for you, check out one of the resources in references.

      When you detect/discover/develop a life mission, things are clearer—not just setting goals and making decisions, but figuring out how to live a life that brings together who you are with what you value and what gives you energy and satisfaction. Forming a life mission statement will be a foundation for developing your teaching philosophy and practice.

References
Carrol County Public Schools. Nd. “Writing a personal mission statement.” Retrieved December 31, 2015. http://www.carrollk12.org/Assets/file/MVH/Resources/Portfolio%20-%20Mission%20Statement.pdf

Covey, Stephen R. Nd. “Missions statements.” The Community. Retrieved December 31, 2015. https://www.stephencovey.com/sample-mission-statements.php

Wankat, Philip C. 2002. The Effective, Efficient Professor: Teaching, Scholarship, and Service. Boston MA: Allyn and Bacon.
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[1] I was an undergraduate at Kent State University, 1965-1969 and a graduate student in sociology, 1969-1970. Kent State conferred my B.A. in June 1969 and my M.A. in August 1970. 

[2]. I was enrolled in Tom Lough’s social movement course in the fall of 1968. I don’t believe I had ever said a word in his class and was shaking at the knees when he asked me to see him after class one day. To my surprise, he said that he had checked my records and thought I should apply for a fellowship to graduate school. Me—who had never even considered going to graduate school.

Footnote to the footnote: In May 1970, Jim Rhodes, the Governor of Ohio at the time, ordered the national guard onto the Kent State campus which eventually resulted in the national guard shooting into a crowd of demonstrators protesting the war in Vietnam and the invasion of Cambodia. On May 4, 1970, four students were killed and 9 were wounded. Tom was the only professor among the Kent 25 who a county grand jury indicted on criminal (and bogus) charges. As a result of the Kent 25 and others fighting for justice, a federal court eventually heard the case and ruled that the charges were unfounded and the grand jury report be stricken from the record and destroyed.

Thank you to Michael Armato and Brett Stockdill, the two other members of our writing group, for comments on an earlier version of this post.