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The mail keeps coming, sometimes six or seven pieces in a day—glossy postcards, clever come-ons, thick envelopes full of promise and opportunity. “12 Nobel winners” one proclaims; “Vibrant intellectual community...producing 11 Rhodes Scholars since 1986” another attests. The packaging varies slightly—a close-up of a brunette in lab goggles squinting at a test tube; a brochure featuring hip, diverse co-eds chilling on a sunny quad—but the hook is the same: Come Here and Become Somebody. The economy may still be sucking wind, but evidently the college admissions gauntlet is going gangbusters. I’m convinced that it, along with 20 percent off coupons from Bed, Bath & Beyond, may be all that’s keeping the United States Postal Service afloat.

No printing or mailing expense has been spared to woo my wide-eyed daughter, a high school junior, and lure her into applying to their college. These may be institutions of higher learning, but they’re playing on baser instincts. None of the schools sending us glitzy marketing materials know anything about my daughter’s particular interests or skills, or has any reason (yet) to believe their program would be a good fit for her. The colleges are out to impress her, then score impressive application numbers, which leads to competitive acceptance rates, which translates into gloating trustees and more generous alumni. The tug-of-ego game goes like this: “Oh, look, we’re great, we want you! Apply here!” followed, frequently I fear, by “Sorry, you didn’t get in.” This is the rough and tumble world my not-quite-17-year-old daughter is gearing up for—her first SAT date fast approaching. I suddenly miss those tedious but simple grade school spelling tests.

The assumption driving the college application rigmarole is that 17-year-olds have some clue about who they are and what they need, educationally at least, in order to Become Somebody. Ideally that would be a Somebody with some means of gainful employment, though these days that takes divine intervention, not a diploma. But looking back on my own college experience (which, also, via multiple mailings, my alma mater keeps encouraging me to do—our 25th reunion is this spring, and nostalgia boosts reunion giving), I realize how clueless and aimless I was, and perhaps still am.

While most of my classmates were hunkered down in pre-med, engineering and econ classes, I was taking “Religion and Narrative” and dabbling in philosophy and ethics. During spring semester senior year, when my friends were buying tailored suits and lining up in the career placement office to interview with Fortune 500 companies, I was applying to escort 13-year-olds on a bike trip along New England’s back roads. A religion degree doesn’t exactly open corporate doors; I had no clue how I’d pay off student loans.

But I don’t regret my impractical and unmarketable academic indulgences. I loved my teachers and was challenged by the course work. In fact, I eventually went on (after the bike tour, which I co-led with Bob Guiccione’s dog walker—so I was making professional networking connections after all!) to graduate school in theology, again, with no ready reply to the reasonable and persistent question from friends and family, “So what are you going to do with that?” It simply drew me, and because I had no other plans or strategy for Becoming Somebody, I followed. I did not follow out of faith—out of some sense of “calling” that many Divinity School classmates claimed to have, or because I hoped and believed my purpose would miraculously become apparent. I followed out of folly, and I knew it. I was grasping, uncertain, undriven, and still, unmarketable. But I was good at waiting tables, and I loved studying Tillich and Kierkegaard.

As my daughter charts her next move, I hope I have the patience and wisdom to let her be impractical and even flounder a bit, if floundering is the path she finds herself on. A well-charted plan, a prestigious diploma, a résumé, a Bob Guiccione connection—these may come in handy one day, but so will having a heart that looks past the strategic plan, beyond the agenda. Souls don’t read like curriculum vitae, we don’t construct or achieve them as much as we stumble upon them, piecemeal, along the way. The juicy parts of life happen more by accident than by intention, or at least they have for me.

I recently picked up a two-dollar copy of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, to see if maybe four and a half decades into my travels, I’d missed some road sign pointing toward that comfortable place called Purpose. His message is basically that God has a plan for me, and my purpose on Earth is to live for eternal life. He’s pretty certain about that, and he’s certainly sold more books than I have, so maybe he’s right. But the best I can tell so far, God’s plan for me is to lollygag a bit, to claim the eternal life of every haphazard moment. I’m less certain than Warren is, but I’m okay with that—after all, I’ve got a theology degree, and he doesn’t.

Stephanie Hunt is a purposeful writer, mother and wife (not necessarily in that order) in Mount Pleasant, SC. She walks her own dog.  Contact her at stephaniehuntwrites.com.