<p>The presentation went over quite well, I think. Jeremy said it sounded good and my boss thanked me in a way that was more than just a <em>pro forma</em> thank you. Some part of me wishes that I had offered something less personal, but the rest of me is just glad it’s over and that I don’t have to care about it too much going further.</p>
<p>For posterity (and an admittedly uneasy sense that I ought to attach just about anything to do with this current task of journaling to the journal itself), here’s what I wound up writing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Before I set about the task of working toward my current career, I was on the path to becoming a Catholic priest. I made it all the way through my BA in religious studies and a year and a half into my MDiv before figuring out that it just wasn’t going to work, and that I would make a terrible priest.</p>
<p>The reasons for this are fairly simple and also not necessarily germane to what I would like to talk about today, which is the process of discernment. Built into the education and administration of running a seminary, even the whole church, is a set of safeguards to help members onto the paths of life that are actually best for them, even if it isn’t what they originally thought. This is set down explicitly in the term “discernment”, which St. John’s University, the seminary that I attended, codified into a system used by the administration.</p>
<p>A cynical way to put it would be a filter to keep the bad priests out, but in reality, it was a way of drawing out a decision that should — or must — take time to commit to. Some decisions are just not meant to be made quickly, whether or not this is because they are bound by time constraints, or simply because they need a lot of thought.</p>
