Career Musings
This entry was posted on 4/19/2007 12:12 PM and is filed under life.
By Mark Miner
*Warning* - The following may approach to stream-of-consciousness writing.
Graduation happens 5-11-07. After that I need a job. Come July I will have a wife to support. Come August she will be back in school and I will still be working. A year after that I will still be working. Maybe grad school will happen the year after that but there's no guarantees.
From this side of the diploma it can seem a bleak road but I think I know better. If all goes well there will be professional development along the way. I will still learn and I will still love learning. My learning is likely to be more specific to my job and will be done with the express purpose of making me better at my job. It is a different concept. I do not mind it because I will still be learning and once I have learned something it is mine. Whatever purpose my employer may have had in teaching is irrelevant to my purpose in learning.
And a career or education is not all of life. Careers rank fourth or fifth in my list of important things to do or have in life and they are more of a useful tool than an identifying characteristic. Church, family, friends, these things make a life. A career contributes to life but exists to support the rest of life. Compare to the Statue of Liberty: the importance and meaning and promise and gratitude reside in the torch, the crown, the folds and sandals and face of Lady Liberty. The pedestal on which she stands is a part of her and without it she could not be what she is but the brick and mortar so artfully laid beneath her are lesser in splendor and significance.
For all of that I know that the evil of the day is sufficient thereunto and I cannot by worry add a single hair to my head or dollar to my salary. The earth is not to be the repository of a Christian's treasure and I will not make it so. Work looms large on the horizon these days and I cannot but think on it but I can certainly avoid fretting about it.
