Vision and Mission Statements

For the purpose of Core II, we will work with these definitions of vision and mission statements:

A vision statement is a concise and bold statement that declares who you are in the matter of a specific issue or dimension of life, or in the matter of life itself. It is the stand you are taking for yourself to be in the face of the risk that life is. Who are you in the matter of life? You have a say in the matter. For the purpose of this class, each vision statement will begin with "I am the possibility of..." 

For instance: "I am the possibility of discovery, of bringing the unsayable to language, and of making history."

A mission statement is an elaboration of the vision statement, which reiterates and amplifies the vision to include more specific goals, plans, and practices that promise to fulfill your vision, emerging from the future and giving you your being and action in the present. What will the world look like with your mission fulfilled?

To be able to write and live these statements, you must engage in a profound inquiry into what it means to be a person of your word. We will begin that inquiry with the interview with Michael Jensen.

In your vision and mission statements you will declare what you have at stake as a writer and researcher in the project you will be inventing in Core II. You will be working to break through into new territory (as a researcher and writer), and not just for this semester, but also for the rest of the MA program, if not for the rest of your life, and your project will serve as the structure to fulfill on the mission you are seeking to accomplish.

The best vision and mission statements speak to a wide audience, calling on that audience to join the speaker in becoming a stakeholder (becoming the narrative audience, so to speak--see Rabinowitz's "Truth in Fiction") in the future articulated therein. Stakeholders can be those who cheer from the sidelines all the way up to direct partners in the creation and delivery of the work your statements guide you to create and share with the world. 

The narrative audience of the vision and mission statements is left touched, moved, and inspired. The "possibility" articulated in such a statement is in no way limited to just you; it should be big enough so that anyone reading it might envision the possibility for themselves, to be enthused about it, and even ready to make your vision their word too, and to then be and take action within it.

You will compose an initial draft of these statements during this stage one of the semester, and you will revise these statements to include in your Prospectus at the end of the semester.

Note that the examples I provide below are not written in the format (the conventions) I am requesting you to write within. Regardless, the impact on the narrative audience of "vision" and "mission" are present in these examples. The "spirit" of the vision or mission statement are present in these examples.

Goethe's "The Holy Longing"

Martha Graham's Letter to Agnes De Mille