Dr. Brandi Kellett knows life is a balancing act. The adjunct English professor, PTO president and mom of three also knows it’s OK to have an imperfect life.
“I don’t have to be right, and I don’t have to be strong. Weakness and failure are part of the gig,” she said, illustrating that by looking at the Bible.
“In Corinthians, when God says to Paul, ‘My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made perfect in weakness,’ it doesn’t say, ‘I’ll be strong until you get back on your feet, but like really, you need to get your crap together.’ It says, ‘My strength is only made perfect when you are not.’”
In other words, human frailties are part of the overall plan and are part of the life experience, she said.
“As I’ve become more accomplished in my professional life, my marriage and parenting, and my church and all these different arenas, I’ve actually learned to take myself a lot less seriously,” she said.
Along the way, she has realized humility goes a long way toward helping a person live with honesty and integrity, “which is what I think it’s all about.”
“I’ve learned that [humility] is actually the key to compassion for other people, which is why it matters so much,” she said. “It doesn’t matter because God wants a bunch of meek, little people walking around. He knows that humility is the key to living well with others. And it really doesn’t happen without it. It’s the key to empathy and kindness and community, I think.”
Kellett said even her new role as PTO president at her sons’ school is an opportunity to learn and to let her faith impact those around her.
“Serving in a secular environment, it’s just been fun to go, ‘Oh, I’m not getting bonus points for how my faith wraps up into this,’” she said. “Is my faith actually going to make me serve differently than other people do? Or am I just going to complain and whine about all the work I have to do, like everybody else? Is Jesus really going to impact the way I do this job?”
After graduating from Wake Forest University in 2000, Kellett worked for five years on staff with Young Life, a non-profit Christian ministry located in Colorado Springs, Co., which reaches out to middle and high school kids.
Kellett said her time with Young Life displayed her innate passion for college students because she was “recruiting and training college leaders on how to do ministry with kids and then doing actual ministry with kids.”
“I love college-age people. I feel like college is this magical time when you can be more independent than you’ve ever been in your whole life,” she said. “You’ve made a break from home, you’re starting to affirm what you believe on your own, but you’re not expected to have it all together yet.
“It’s perfectly OK to say, ‘I don’t know what I think about that.’ You’re not clueless, but you’re also not together. You’re allowed to just experiment and flounder and think and ponder and listen and learn and read.”
Kellett began working at Lipscomb in January 2011, one month after graduating with her PhD in American and Caribbean Studies from the University of Miami.
As a professor of World Literature II and freshman seminar, Kellett said she loves helping students see things from a new point of view.
“I get to watch kids literally think about things they have never ever thought about before,” she said. “They’ve maybe come close to thinking about it, but they’ve never had the words to articulate what they’re learning or noticing. They’ve never been able to name the power struggles, and so when we talk about postcolonial studies and conflict and oppression and resistance, it’s really fun to give students a different way of viewing the world.”
When she’s not teaching, Kellett said she spends time with her husband, Josh, an OBGYN at Vanderbilt, and their three kids, playing guitar, piano or singing. Kellett’s family also volunteers at Safe Haven Family Shelter.
Kellett, a native of Harrimn, Tenn., said she encourages college students, and even those in their upper 20s, both “not to take yourself too seriously and to take yourself incredibly seriously.”
“Not taking yourself so seriously is so helpful if you’re really going to engage in this ‘try on life and figure out who you are’ experiment that can happen in your late teens and early 20s,” she explained. “If you’re so serious and have to be so right when you’re 18 about everything you believe, you’re not going to learn a whole lot.
“Be humble, listen a lot, observe a lot, read a lot, and try things. All of those things can help shape who you become and how you impact the world and how the world impacts you.
“Taking yourself seriously, I think, means recognizing this time for what it is,” she continued. “It’s unbelievable! You get to learn from experts in their field about a huge array of topics. You should take it seriously … because you want to be a thoughtful, creative, lifelong learner.”
Kellett said those “thoughtful, creative, lifelong learners” are the people who begin successful businesses late in life, or who “impact their churches and impact their communities. They’re the types of people who raise thoughtful kids who are curious about the world. They’re the types of people that you want to have over for dinner.
“I say that a lot when I teach. I’m interested in teaching you things, but I’m really interested in making you a good dinner partner,” Kellett said. “You could waste the opportunity of college if you don’t take yourself seriously enough to realize this time is not just a fun, get my diploma time. This is really shaping me. This is my first shot at life on my own. What am I going to do with it?”