Where from Here?

I can't believe I'm still playing catch-up! Now, I am at a week ago Wednesday.

Most (if not all) of my loyal readers know me in real life, so most (if not all) of my loyal readers know that I organized CCM's first-ever career fair. We have a strong CCM at the College, but one place we have to grow is in the transition from CCM into the Real World. In all honesty, the transition from college to life is hard. For many college students, the pre-scripted life path ends with graduation from college. We've gone from elementary school to middle school to high school to college, because, well, that's what we do. After graduation however, our future opens up into one frightening blank. No matter what we do in CCM, I don't think we can make that step overarchingly easy. That doesn't mean we can't help.

I had the idea at the beginning of this year that we should educate CCMers about what one can do within the Church. A "job fair" setting seemed logical, so I reserved a room and began sending out email after email to groups I thought should have a presence. Then I started searching various resources to discover new groups. Then I started hearing back -- a lot of "no"s, but often with suggestions of more contacts. I went for everything : graduate schools, service programs, justice and peace groups, charitable organizations, religious vocations, lay ministry... Ultimately, about a dozen people came representing all these categories.

Once I had enough "yes"s from groups that I knew we would have more guests than a handful of wonderful Sisters, I started worrying that no students would come. I advertised on Facebook, got into the campus listserv, hung flyers, and reserved a poster space in the student center. It became every third sentence out of my mouth when talking to our Board.

Students came. They came from the College, as well as from one east and one west of us. (Those schools brought their campus ministers too, who liked the program!) Some good conversations were had, both at the event and at the dinner afterward. I learned some details to change, and I will leave notes from my replacement, because I want it to happen again next year. I can see this event growing and becoming something bigger and better as time goes on.