I have a variety of journals dating back to the age of six. And if you thumb through them, you will find a spiral staircase of answers to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
A teacher was first. A mother. A singer. Later, an advertising executive, an illustrator, an author. An English professor. A history professor. A writer.
I was the kid who spent hours in my room writing and drawing, folding a stack of white paper and stapling the inside to make a book, then filling page after page with poems. I sang before I could talk, and started learning piano when I was six. I loved science. I was writing basic programs for our computer when I was ten or eleven.
I loved history. I would check out so many library books that the bungee cord on the back of my bike would strain to hold them as I rode up the long hill home. Oh, yeah, and among them were dictionaries and thesauruses…thesauri.
I checked out thesauri from the library. More than one. More than once.
I loved all of the subjects. But I knew that one day I would specialize. After all, that’s what we do, right? It never really occurred to me that you could have all the jobs.
Back in the 1830’s, it was not like that that. Not in America, anyway. Generalists were valued. Knowing about many things was expected. Drawing lines between many fields of study was a worthwhile pursuit.
Then came specialization.
You can’t fully blame Darwin or Dewey, but everyone of significance seemed bent on specialization. After all, it was the way of progress! And indeed, only a deep dive into certain subjects would bring about the advances in medicine and science and technology.
But what about those who walk the line between disciplines, who skate from one to another, who survey across the lines from above to observe connections and find fresh ideas between the fields of study?
In college, I finished one major by my junior year, so I added another: Renaissance Studies. It was a major that barely existed, an interdisciplinary major comprised of courses in history, art history, literature, drama…so perfect. I loved it. And the inevitable, “So, what are you going to do with…”
Teach. I’m going to teach. I will be an English Professor.
My professors recognized my passion. I became a Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with my double degree, then packed up my red Ford Escort and moved three thousand miles away to go to graduate school. I undertook a field of study designed to give me the historical context for the literature and drama I loved…and then I fell in love with history.
I will be a History Professor!
I graduated with my master’s degree in church history and moved home.
Or, I could tell it this way: I moved to Boston, and I met fascinating people. I spent hours in museums, studying art. I learned Latin and French. I spent a year writing a thesis drawing the connections between theology and drama and history. I drove a ninety-year-old opera singer down to the Longy School of Music once a week and basked in her stories of life on three or four continents. I became her friend. I was the one she called when her beloved cat Figaro died one snowy afternoon. She gave me a few opera lessons.
I led music for chapel. I grew as a musician, as a worship leader. I endured some very hard times, and out of that I wrote an entire album of songs. I gave a two-hour concert of original music–“Bravissima,” said Mrs. Irving–and then I graduated. I packed up my keyboard, and I moved home.
Both accounts are correct. I became more interdisciplinary.
Back in California with a growing number of degrees, I took a temp job. And then I was hired to do a multidisciplinary job: I came on staff at a church and became the pastor’s assistant. I wrote Bible studies, created PowerPoint presentations, was a sounding board, and was involved with leading the music. I wrote more songs. When the worship pastor went on sabbatical, I led the high school choir and led the music every week.
I am a musician.
And then Westmont called.
I had put in my resume a year earlier. An instructor was going on sabbatical. Would I like to teach the introduction to the history of Christianity?
Of course I would! I will be a history professor!
350 students passed through my lecture course over the next three years. I lectured for two hours twice a week. I loved my students. I loved lecturing, because it meant telling stories. My goal was to embody enthusiasm for history, for the people and the times. To tell their stories. And most of my students loved the stories, too.
This is it, right? But now I need another degree, because I can’t keep teaching at this level with a lonely little Master’s degree.
So, I got a fellowship to Fordham University.
Off to New York City.
Is there a place on earth better suited to a Multipotentialite?
Okay, let me define. A what?
Multipotentialite.
Nope, didn’t know the word existed before today. Then I watched this Ted talk and I felt like I had found my people. Someone who does not have one passion, but many. Who moves from one deep area of interest to another, who walks on the edges of the disciplines.
Back to New York.
As I began to trudge toward my doctorate in history, I looked around and started to feel uneasy. My colleagues had been working for years, heads down in the library. And I respected them. But as I studied art and literature and history, my own interdisciplinary loves bubbled up again. I spent time with new people, including a fascinating young press rep who was destined to be my husband. We went to plays and heard jazz musicians, and I soaked up the beauty of the City. I kept working, balancing the study of two languages with many other classes and massive amounts of reading. I spent my ten hours a week in the medieval studies office, creating newsletters and managing databases and working o the website. I learned to distill vast quantities of thought into several bullet points. I honed my listening skills. I continued to explore the edges of my studies, where art and literature met theology and history, and found some kindred spirits.
But I realized that it wasn’t all I wanted.
I was at one of the top schools in the nation for my field. This was the path I had been traveling for a number of years…only to give up?
I don’t give up.
But the more I thought, prayed, talked to my now-fiancé, the clearer it became: the path I was on required that I sacrifice a number of other parts of who I was becoming, and I couldn’t do that. I was still an artist. A musician. A writer, a singer, a songwriter. And even though my studies were interdisciplinary, there was no margin for the rest of who I was.
When you are a type-A, it can be difficult to be a Multipotentialite.
But it is possible.
So I moved to the next thing.
And the next.
In the dozen years since I finished that second Master’s and let go of academia, I have lived a number of lives. It’s not a tidy list. And grouping the mass of these actives together makes me feel like I look scattered and uncommitted. I’m neither…well, I am not uncommitted. So, my unorthodox resume which does not feel like it would fit in on LinkedIn:
- I taught sixth grade.
- I became a mother.
- I taught piano, with two prodigies among my students.
- I ghostwrote a book.
- I wrote my first journal article for Modern Reformation.
- I started a MOPS group.
- I led more music and wrote more songs…but a lot fewer after I had kids.
- I started creating hand-painted photography.
- I started making portraits.
- I taught music at a school for three years.
- I started being paid for making portraits.
- I mentored young women.
- I edited a woman’s memoirs.
- I became the music director at our church.
- I edited a medical mystery.
- I became a professional photographer.
- I opened my first business.
- I started designing websites.
- I recorded two webinars.
- I opened my second business.
When my mom was my age, she went back to school and became a reading specialist, and then she went on and got her doctorate in Educational Psychology.
I always thought that would be my path.
But instead I became a businesswoman. I go to networking groups and listen to endless podcasts on being an entrepreneur. I hired my first assistant. I am launching a third component of my business in the spring.
But you know what?
I am still a storyteller.
When I was little, I wrote stories. And now I tell the stories of families through portraits. And I tell the stories of small businesses through websites. And every Sunday, I tell the redemption story as I lead the beautiful congregation of Pinewoods in worship.
God is a Multipotentialite. Well, no, not potential. He actually does all the things.
And I am made in His image.
So I fit right in, after all.
frosted them with buttercream vanilla frosting.
Building A Cathedral Takes Time 