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No Matter What Your Educational Goal is, Be Deliberate
If you have had a chance to read the last blog entry “Choosing College, A Hierarchy” and have had a chance to look over the flow chart, hopefully one of the conclusions you came to was: You have to take ownership of not only your education but your future too.
Teaching English at the university level, I have met hundreds of students—all with varied goals and aspirations. I saw a lot. I met students who knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives and how a college education fit into that vision. I met students who thought the goal of life was to get a college degree. I also met students who had no idea what the goal of their life was, but they thought they should be in college because they thought somehow they would figure out life simply by being in proximity of those who had a firm handle on their own life vision.
One truth I can tell you is this: you have to manage your educational pursuits yourself. Let me reword this three different ways—I feel extremely passionate about this issue and I want to reach as many individuals who do not quite have a vision as possible. You are in charge of your life and thus the things you will or will not do. God has given you life and free will—outline and live a lifestyle that will bring glory to God. Even if you do not believe in God, this makes your life—your limited amount of time here on earth—that much more sacred, do not waste it thinking that you cannot do the things you want to do—spend your life chasing after the worthwhile pursuits you want to do and even if you come up short in the end, no one will ever say you wasted your life, because you tried.
So, this business of choosing what type of education you will pursue is tied intimately in with the overall goal you have as a human being. Do not go to college unless you know what your goal is. Abstain from enrolling in a university until you know what you wish to do with your life. Avoid institutions of higher learning unless you have a vision of your life. If you know what you want to do, say you want to be a doctor, then find a mentor to help you choose the path that makes the most sense and pray on it before you start the admissions ball rolling.
What if I have no idea what to do with my life? The one thing I can tell you is not to go to college—and here’s why. If you were given a package by a friend and they said they needed you to deliver it to a location for them, but they would call and give you the directions later in the day, you surely would not get in your car and start driving anywhere beyond your driveway. You would have no idea where to take the package and you might end up driving for miles in the opposite direction. True, you might end up going in the right direction, but this is not an either or scenario. A compass has 360 degrees of choices: your life has infinitely more than that and you have to decide where you will go—don’t let your friends decide for you.
So what should I do? Sign up to see the world. Volunteer to serve the underserved. Get a job in a car factory. Sign up with your church or local humanitarian organization and dig wells for families in Central America, South America, Africa, and/or Asia. Go see the world. Go see something strange. Go do something ordinary. Go do something unordinary. I am certain when you return, you will know a lot of things that you do not want to do, as well as a few things you do want to do. If you decide you need to go to college after your service, you will be much more engaged and interested in your studies than the majority of your classmates.
But if I don’t go to college right after high school or if I don’t choose the life path my friends and family want me to pursue I’ll be considered a failure. Not true. Would you consider anyone who, during WWII, graduated high school and immediately served over seas and went to college afterward? Not immediately going to college after high school does not disqualify you from ever going to college—bad choices after high school disqualify you from college. I have not met too many high school graduates who did not know what they wanted to do with their life and who also acted completely responsible while attending college and “figuring out” life. These students were idle. They had no group of fellow majors to collaborate with—they were also much less likely to join clubs and other social organizations. What usually happened to these students? They joined a collection of idle or delinquent students who also had no vision for their future and together they simply existed on campus. They participated in activities that I label “Time Travel” activities: e.g., smoking, drinking, drugs, sex, video games, etc.
In moderation and for recreation—when you’ve earned it—some (some is the key word here) of these activities are fine to indulge in (taking into account state and federal laws as well as respect for women and the sacredness of marriage). But, let’s be honest, none of these activities will lead to a successful life or career that fulfills what God calls us to do with our lives (and maybe you want to start a ministry through video games, okay, but you will have to complete a host of other activities to achieve this—playing video games 24/7 will not bring your vision to fulfillment). “Time Travel” activities are available to individuals whether they are in college or taking a year off before starting college. Their temptation is real and it is strong if you do not have a vision for your life. Like driving around with the package in your car waiting for your friend to call, it is tempting to stop at the local tavern and get a burger and a beer—who knows how long it will be before you hear from your friend. The worst occurrence, that I’ve seen happen too often, is an individual realizing their vision for their life, but they have dug themselves into a hole that overwhelms them with despair and they never attempt to realize their vision for their life. They adopt a lesser one, call it their life vision, and in ten to twenty years become disillusioned and claim that the whole life vision thing is a lie—well, if it isn’t your first choice, it is a lie.
Removing yourself from the current American culture is a great way to stimulate deep thoughts about your life, the world, and your place in it. “Time Travel” activities most often deny you deeply reflective moments and deliver you into the future unchanged and uneducated—you have in essence simply hit the skip button for a portion of your life. You will never get that time back. Do not listen to popular culture. You are not a loser or a failure if you decide to go and serve in an underdeveloped country for eight months after high school. Failure is not taking the time to envision your life. Failure is never planning a path to bring about your life’s vision. Failure is never starting in on your life’s vision and purpose because you voluntarily gave up your God-given free will to the culture you live in—a culture that will never truly love you they way you wish to be loved and will never sustain your soul in the way you hunger for it to be sustained. A college degree, in and of itself, will not make you happy.
A college degree is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A college degree, when you pursue your life’s purpose, is like a patch on a quilt. One square is not an overwhelmingly great reason to start a quilt nor will one square—by itself—complete the quilt. The square is a part of the quilt and is there to bring the vision of the quilt, that its maker had, into reality. When you pursue your vision, if you need a degree to bring it to fulfillment, you will earn a degree to help you along your path—but, it should only be done because it is necessary—if it is not necessary, you really are wasting your time and life. A typical undergraduate degree takes 4-5 years of your life. The average lifespan of an American is 80 years (I rounded up from 78.7). That is 5% of your life. That’s not a big deal. Oh no? Add that to the 18 years of your life you must pay until you are recognized as an adult and you are out 27.5% of your life. Deciding to invest 5% of your life into something is a big decision—even bigger if you are considering graduate school.
If you are having trouble getting yourself ready to apply the flow chart to your life and plan a path to reach your vision, I’ll finish this post off with a few activities that can help you generate ideas and get you thinking about what you might like to spend your life doing.
- Figure Out How You Like to Help Others
If you look at great leaders like Jesus, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Teresa, what we notice right away is their devotion to others. You hear it all the time from people who have gotten out there and served—it makes them feel satisfied, fulfilled, content. It is not just a bunch of bull that people are trying to get you to believe. Get out there and do some service. Sign yourself up for a whole bunch of different things in your community—small and large. It is extremely unlikely that after a few service missions you will feel the same as before you started. Keep this in mind too, even mentally impaired individuals enjoy helping others—it is simply part of our DNA. It’s who we are, we are helpers.
- What Careers Would Enable You To Do the Service You Enjoy the Most
Reflect back to your service and think about which types of service you enjoyed the most and why. Not everyone likes working with people one-on-one. Some feel best working behind the scenes and remaining anonymous. You have to be honest with yourself what you prefer. Make a list of possible vocations that would enable you to pursue your service preference.
III. Have the Hard Heart-to-Heart With Yourself
Subtract everything—as best you can—from your life vision but you and God. Narrow down your career choices to three. Imagine you develop a rare disease, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), and you know that your body is going to slowly deteriorate and you will lose motor function. What career would you choose despite this physical handicap?
The truth is, if you chose wisely, you don’t have to stop pursuing your passion at 65. If you want to serve through teaching—you can teach for a long time. One of my oldest professors in college was a 90 year-old woman—and she was sharp as a tack. The point is, you are planning for the long haul, so keep in mind, if you are young, feeling all the strong feelings that come with being in your prime, that is great, but it will fade as you get older and you will want to take this into account. There is nothing that breaks my heart more than when an athlete retires and their life is over. Be practical and realistic about what type of service you will be able to continue to do over the course of your lifetime.
Thank you for reading. My name is Joshua R. Franklin. I am a Christian and a writer. Currently I am working toward a Doctorate in Biblical Studies at Colorado Theological Seminary. If you think I’m smart, you can be too, check out where I am getting my Christian education: http://www.seminary.ws.
Accredited or Not Accredited
It is unfortunate, but each year thousands of students fail to ask two crucial questions: is my school accredited and do I need to attend an accredited school to accomplish my future goals and dreams? The repercussions of this failure to examine ones school are not felt until, in many cases, years later. The most emphasized consequence we see occurs when a student needs an accreditation stamp on their diploma, but unfortunately no one informed them of the necessity of attending an accredited institution. The end result is that all of their hard academic work is deemed null and void. They must either begin school again or bitterly go through life with what they have.
There is a reason that this scenario gets a lot of attention, because the individual will not get to reap the benefits of their investment of time and money. However, there is another scenario that plays out, but it does not get as much emphasis, and I will explain why. In this other scenario, students attend an accredited school, but for what they wish to do in their future, they do not actually need a degree that has an accreditation stamp on it. These students will spend years of their life in school becoming educated and will then spend more time than they should paying off the high price of an accredited degree. Now this scenario doesn’t get a lot of emphasis because most students simply accept that college is expensive and you have to pay the fee just like all the other students, so they get their degree, begin their future, and when they look back they point to their education and say it was worth it because they are doing what they want to do in life.
My point is that perhaps a great many students could benefit from having a serious conversation with themselves as to whether accreditation is absolutely necessary (and as I mentioned, for a great many students accreditation is). What about the student whose future does not hinge on an accredited degree? There are still enough professions out there that it is worth examining the accredited or not question. There are a huge number of artists out there who do not need a degree at all—they just need to know how to do what ever it is that they wish to do. Unless they wish to teach at a university, they just need the education and with the cost of an art degree from an accredited institution (google it, the cost will have an effect on your jaw) I think it is absolutely worth questioning the necessity of an accredited degree for all students. Many students could be starting out after college with significantly less debt (or in some cases none at all) if they simply analyzed their situation to see if they really need to pay the accreditation fee.
What exactly does it mean if a school is accredited? Accreditation is a good thing. It means that a school has basically been audited by a third party, the department of education, and after some scrutiny, their academic programs have been approved. Or in other words, a school’s academic programs have been reviewed and it is concluded that a reasonable student who went through the program would receive the education they need to move on and successfully utilize the knowledge and skills offered by the school. Accreditation is a good thing because it helps to ensure quality and thoroughness of academic programs. The downside is that it comes with a high cost and that cost is passed on to students.
Schools that are not accredited do not have such a fee to pass on their students and can offer education that is significantly less expensive. Not accredited does not mean “cake walk” or “diploma mill” or that the school will just give anyone a degree. Some schools that are not accredited do sell degrees, but not all. The same applies to accredited schools, it is not impossible to find an accredited school that passes the majority of its students and not because the quality of their work was deemed acceptable. I can still remember being appalled when I was teaching English for a school and was basically stated, in a meeting, “these are private liberal arts students, you don’t fail them—they are paying too much money.” I don’t teach for that college anymore.
Now, in order to teach English on the college level, yes, I did have to earn multiple accredited degrees. But, to attend seminary, and learn about God, no, I do not necessarily have to have an accredited degree. My situation, however, is not every student’s. The student has to have that honest conversation with themselves about their future and what their future is going to expect from them. I would encourage every student to seek mentorship from someone who has already walked the path.
I want to dispell just a few myths that are out there regarding schools that do not pursue accreditation before the end of this post:
Accredited schools are academically better than non-accredited ones.
I would never subscribe to this as a general rule. When it comes to your education, you do not want a blanket statement to dictate your future—you will want to get in and do your homework on the schools you are interested in. What you will find is that, just like anything else in life—there are great accredited schools and not-so-great ones, just as there are some great unaccredited schools and some not-so-great ones.
An accredited school means I am guaranteed a quality education.
I wish this were the case. However, there is still the human factor. Just because a school’s programs looks good on paper does not guarantee that they will be executed in the classroom to perfection. Any institution will tell you that hiring quality instructors is no easy task. Accredited schools do end up with poor quality instructors who run their classrooms in a way that would not pass accreditation standards if they were individually audited. On the flip-side, there are countless instructors who teach at schools that are unaccredited that, if audited, would pass accreditation standards with flying colors.
Accreditation is really supposed to be a voluntary process—or so it is claimed. However, “voluntary” as it is in conversation, it would be suicide for a university from, say, the Big 10 to forego renewing its accreditation status. So, this raises the question of how voluntary is the process really? It is a bandwagon situation, if you don’t get on it, you aren’t as good as everyone else. Sure, except that one of the best teachers I ever had was a small 90-year-old woman who taught American literature. She did not go to an accredited institution, that is accreditation was not then (when she was in school) as prevalent as it is today. As time goes on, we will have only instructors at accredited institutions who have degrees from institutions that were accredited when they were students.
As I have said, accreditation is meant for good. If you need it for your future, then you need it for your future. I would just tell any future student to take some time and analyze your situation to determine if an accredited education is what you have to have. If you don’t need it, then you don’t necessarily have to pay the high cost of it. You can get a quality education at a price you can afford if you take the time to be deliberate about your education.
By Joshua Franklin, Doctor of Biblical Studies (DBS) student at Colorado Theological Seminary
Colorado Theological Seminary 