Advising students on college admissions and financial aid is an important pillar of most high school counseling programs. This work has become more challenging for many school counselors since the pandemic, so it is imperative to find new ways to explore how counselors approach college advising today. This novel research utilized Hansen's (1995) vocational learning theory to contribute to understanding how working with students on postsecondary pathways connected to a counselor's identity, both professionally and personally. Through the methodology of basic qualitative study and the method of semi-structured interviews, this research presents the perspectives of 16 public high school counselors at suburban, urban, and rural high schools in the Midwestern United States. It investigates how they connected to the idea of vocation, learned about college advising work, and leveraged their learnings with students in practice post-pandemic. Participants demonstrated service, identity, and learning orientations across the findings, including those related to guiding students on college and career. They largely came to school counseling to serve students and were mostly satisfied in their role choice due to meaningful work with students. All identified ways in which their positionality as a school counselor was a part of their personal identity and shared stories of helping students with an eye to access and equity. The counselors in the study engaged with professional development to improve services and adapted to student needs, including implications from the pandemic. Students, and people in general, were the counselor's central concern, pointing to school counseling as a vocation. In consideration of the findings, this study provides participant-informed ideas for future research and policy. This includes the recommendation that K-12 and higher education leaders prioritize and nurture the human aspects of school counseling and college advising work. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]