For my first job out of college I got hired by a paper mill in Kalamazoo, Michigan starting up a sample area in a 90 year old company. I got to invent something new, and even my boss was not sure what a sample area should look like. It was scary and great fun. So, I had to reach back into my experiences working in the market place to pay my college tuition for inspiration, and I had to read and ask questions. My college studies were perfectly useless in this first job.
You see, my major was Christian Education. That major was supposed to prepare me to be a Christian Education Director in a mid sized to large church. That means I was a professional at running Sunday School, youth clubs, and summer trips for bored youth to Mexico to sing hymns in lousy Spanish to national Christians and eat their tortillas.
From the paper company, I was drafted into the US Army. My experience there helped me see how utterly inept most people are who manage things. I learned to survive. I learned to look busy when I had absolutely nothing to do. College did not have any classes in these skills. So, I started typing my college class notes to look busy on the theory that they would become more useful if I could actually read what I wrote down. I took some class notes in Swahili in order to keep the person next to me from copying my notes. I would have learned more if I had copied THEIR notes.
After I left the US Army, I worked for a Bible Conference managing their snack shop. The snack shop was supposed to make a profit over the summer, from which a bonus honorarium would be sent to all the speakers at the conference during the summer. The shop had never made a profit. So, I sat down with the conference director, and we talked about ways to make a profit. I then started costing out everything from the hamburger to the count of cherries in ice cream topping to the cost of a new door stop. I found that if we used paper products instead of washing dishes, we could drop an employee. I also asked the director to redecorate the snack shop and make it look like a country cafe. I ran specials related to the missionary of the week speaker at the conference and a red, white, and blue banana split on 4th of July week (the blue ice cream was bubble gun flavor).
It worked. We made a profit, and it had nothing to do with Christian Education and Liberal Arts.
The Lord lead me to teach in a Bible Institute and on to be a missionary in Ethiopia and Kenya. In Kenya I was the Headmaster of a post secondary school for pastors. I set about to teach only things that had to do with pastoring. This was because I had come to believe that the curriculum of an American Bible college of any kind was nearly useless, and I sure didn't want to drop the same rubbish on African pastors in training.
Finally, I returned to the USA and took a church in the High Desert of California. One evening I was studying for a sermon, and I pulled out my college notes in Doctrine and Bible classes. There was absolutely nothing there of any use in my ministry. When I dug through my notes in Psychology, the life issues among the people I dealt with and cared about in the church were not discussed in those classes. Abnormal Psychology was all about Freud and Mazlow and James. Rubbish.
So, I burned my class notes, literally. I actually felt a sense of new freedom as they burned. I no longer had the need to pretend that those five years in BIOLA University were a point of reference I had to respect. It had been a total loss.
You may ask me if I was simply not called to be a great intellectual..... that I should have flipped hamburgers straight out of High School. You may be right, but then, THIS JOURNAL ONLINE proves to you that I may have skills a bit more useful than being a fry cook. For the record, the writing skills I learned came from High School in a missionary kids' boarding school, Rift Valley Academy in Kenya.
My conclusion is this: The first two years in college you take a set of classes that are called Liberal Arts. They are all worthless if you were awake in High School and trying. The purpose of those first two years is for the college to make a profit off of the Freshman and Sophomore class before half of them drop out. The last two years, and the Masters Degree, are when you allegedly study for your career you dreamed about. The problem is, you spent 90% of you time trying to hand back to the professor the answers he expected and writing papers that charmed him. You became a master of regurgitation. This in no way prepared you for the real world.
The vast majority of people who attend college end up in employment that has nothing to do with their college major.
Now, here is a video proving that I am not the only one thinking these thoughts:
If you want to prepare for the future, and you are about 18 to 25 years old, find someone doing what you would like to do, and ask them to mentor you. Go to a trade school which is 100% focused on the trade or profession you want to get into. Volunteer to work somewhere in the world helping people do what you want to do. Then, as soon as possible, get a job in the area of life you want to be in. Start doing it, even if you have to start at the very bottom. Along the way, do take classes and go to seminars which directly relate to what you are doing. If there are certifications for skill levels, such as in technology, study and pass those certificate levels. Start building a resumé.
With some of the money you save, learn new things, like deep sea fishing, Ham radio, or sign language. How about getting a license to drive trucks? Or, spend a summer in a fire tower in the National Forest spotting fires. Learn to game hunt for food from an older man who hunts a lot. These side lines will be second skills you may one day have to fall back on when your chosen profession tanks.
If you would like to be in Christian ministry, find a pastor who will mentor you. This has to be a man who will take you seriously and expose you to various aspects of pastoring a church. If you lack Bible study skills, buy some study helps, and start doing YouTube videos teaching your way through a book of the Bible.
The last thought on college or university is this. That world is rapidly being trashed for even the purpose it once claimed was legitimate. This is being done as Political Correctness and Liberal hate mongering is promoted by university management and faculty. Attending a college today is a horror of frustration as you tip toe around trying to figure out what pronoun to use for some sex pervert next to you in class. Also, university campuses have become moral hog pens. Students are drunk, stoned, and playing the fool in sexual obsessions much of the time, and you will be a freak if you do not care to participate. The management of universities make no effort to restrain this, indeed, they often exacerbate it by mixing up men and woman and sodomites in the dorms.
JAMES ALTUCHER ON COLLEGE
I will tell you what my college degree got me over the years since I graduated in 1967:
It got me hired to run the snack shop mentioned above.
It got me the chance to teach religion classes in a High School in Eldoret, Kenya.
It qualified me to do substitute teaching in public schools to add income as I pastored small churches.
It got me to the head of the line a few times in Africa as long as I wore a suit and tie to go with it. This was in government offices where I had to deal with red tape.
In my years of serving the Lord as a pastor and Bible teacher, my college degree in Christian Education was almost totally worthless. Frankly, I think a Christian College is basically a day care center where Christian parents send their kids to try to keep them in better company until they finish growing up. Also, many parents hope their kids will find the "ideal mate" in marriage in a Christian College. Instead, their kids find every possible way to break the rules and party and play the fool.
That is a lot of money to pay out to find a place to park your butt and coast for four years.
