Establishing the Pyramid of Power: The Mission

Chapter Four asks me to talk about my mission(s).

In her interview with Kim Pawlak, Robison tells us that:

Mission Statement. Your mission statement is more practical, and changes every three to five years for adults, and sooner for students. Your mission statement answers the question, “If I am here for this purpose, what shall I do about it? “To write your mission statement, you will need to know what your strengths are (three verbs), what your values are, and to whom you typically offer yourself to,” she said. “As a result, your mission statement will follow this formula: ‘My mission is to (verb, verb, verb), that are my strengths, for, to, or with (people, people, people), who want (value, value, value – your four to eight values). When you put your mission statement together, it’s really helpful to use information from the outside world, such as your students.”

Ghaaa.  I hate hate hate writing to fill in formulae.  But this process is about surrendering to something else, right -- to argue, to think critically about the book and what the book asks me to do, but to submit to the experience.

So here is the formula again:

My mission is to (verb, verb, verb),  -- and notably, the verbs here should be my strengths.

for, to, or with (people, people, people), 

who want (value, value, value). 

Robison suggests, or at least models, personal and professional missions, more than one mission yielding the same purpose.  I accept this the same way that astronauts head into low orbit with more than one mission on a flight.

...

Teaching and Service Mission
My mission is to develop rhetorical abilities in students (inside and outside the classroom) who want to express themselves as a means of bringing about change in their communities and in themselves.

Writing and Research Mission
My mission is to exercise my own rhetorical abilities for readers (inside and outside my discipline) in a way which uses my expression of myself and my ideas to model and to create an opening for their expression of themselves and their ideas.

Personal Mission
My mission is to cultivate relationships with friends, family, partner and possibly, someday, children that form a safe space for us to speak freely to both support and challenge each other to grow.