The girls (and Jack, to a lesser extent) have been really into a show called Bluey. It’s put out by BBC Australia, and from a parental perspective is just about the perfect show (if you can get past the fact that all the characters are anthropomorphic dogs). The episodes are only eight minutes long. It shows a healthy, functional relationship between a mom, dad, and two daughters. Every episode centers around an imaginative game that the girls play (usually with their parents). It’s well written enough that even parents can enjoy the dialogue, and they often include classical themes in the background music so tastefully that kids don’t even realize they’re getting exposed to culture. And, in addition to inspiring the girls to use their imaginations by imitating their games when the screen is off and consequently providing (nearly) guilt-free screen-time-as-babysitter breaks for me, it has prompted lots of good discussions and life lessons over the past year of this homeschooling adventure.
And not just for the girls. Stay tuned for the grown-up-applicable life lesson at the end.
As I go back to try to consider my life’s path and how it wound up here, the most logical place to start seemed to be college. This was the first place that I really had to make any major decisions that would determine the course of my life. I had always been a rule-follower, and up until this point, my life’s path consisted of my choosing between the limited options set before me and then dedicating myself to excellence at whatever I set my hand to. In this endeavor, I think it is safe to say that I largely succeeded, with the notable exceptions of my athletic career (about which the less said the better) and my romantic pursuits. (Given that my idea of flirting was to ask my desiderata what she got on number 16 of the previous night’s math homework, to say that I was a late bloomer would be generous).
College was the last stop along this predetermined path. It was never questioned whether I would go to college. Even the kind of college I would go to was largely taken for granted. My dad had attended Oregon State, where (in his words) “on a good day, you’re just a number, and on a bad day you don’t exist at all;” he wanted something better for his kids and steered us towards smaller Christian liberal arts schools where we would have the opportunity to know and be known—to receive an education as well as a degree. So, the fall after I graduated high school in 2004, it was off to Seattle Pacific University to begin my transition to adulthood within the campus cocoon.
I was repeatedly told by my parents, professors, and even guidance counselors before and during college that what I studied didn’t really matter. The important thing was to choose something that I loved, apply myself diligently to my studies, excel, and prove that I could learn anything. Then, it was assumed, I would have my pick of employers eager to make use of my proven talents, and some combination of divine guidance, my own awakening personal interests, and serendipity would take care of the rest.
And so, almost immediately, I decided to study history. For a life-altering decision, I didn’t put a lot of thought into it. I don’t recall any other potential majors even crossing my mind. Science was not really appealing to me; I have never had a science teacher that was particularly inspiring, and abstract ideas interested me a lot more than the messy nitty-gritty of the workings of the physical world. Engineering seemed an unlikely fit given my fraught relationship with technology and luddite sympathies. Given my dearth of mathematical education—after fourth grade, my eighth grade Geometry class with Mr. Osborn was my only math instruction that was not largely self-taught—math and physics were not on my horizon. Like everything that had come before, this choice wasn’t really a choice at all, besides simply choosing to say yes to the obvious next step.
But there was a catch: following graduation, for the first time in my life, there was no pre-scripted “after.” Although I (in good evangelical fashion) spent my undergraduate years pleading with increasing desperation for God to give me a sign (à la Gideon) of what I was to do, no such sign was forthcoming. So, the fall of my senior year, I came up with my own first (and last, as it turns out) ten-year plan for my life, which I duly presented to God for His approval: I would marry my girlfriend of two years, get my doctorate, and get a tenured position teaching history at my alma mater. It seemed like a good plan.
It lasted around three months.
The reasons for my life plan’s implosion are complicated, and I’m still trying to sort them out. Probably the single largest factor was depression, which wouldn’t be diagnosed for another three years. It was one thing to hold tight to a predetermined course when the whole path in front of me seemed to be one black cloud. However, trying to chart my own course in that cloud felt impossible, and to my darkened eyes, anyone and anything that represented that future simply became part of the cloud. With the benefit of hindsight, I believe that was the primary factor that did in my relationship with my girlfriend.
While depression also played a role in dooming my professorial aspirations, there were other factors. As I looked more carefully, I realized that the odds of attaining my dream were long. I was informed at a graduate school interest meeting my junior year that, for every three doctorates awarded, there was around one tenure-track position available, and fewer in the humanities. What was more, these positions were so coveted that they were generally underpaid, overworked, and you had to move wherever you could find them. A career in academia began to seem more like a high-risk, low yield gamble on the stock market than a safe investment of time and resources.
More significantly, I realized that academia would not be good for my soul. I loved the idea of spending my days immersed in deep thoughts and important conversations about big ideas with eager young minds. I still do. But as I looked more closely at the culture of the academy, I realized there was more that I would have a much harder time with. The professors that I most enjoyed and respected were those who had earned their undergraduate degrees, gone out into the world (whether as volunteers in Mennonite Central Committee, high school teachers, or itinerant hippies), found something that was worth spending their lives trying to understand, and then returned to school in order to understand it and help others understand it, too. Those professors that did not have this grounding in real-world experience, though they were often good teachers and highly respected in their fields, generally seemed insecure, caught in the games and politics of the ivory tower, constantly feeling that they were weighed and found wanting against their colleagues who had published more, or received more awards or accolades, or been cited more.
Without some grounding in reality, I could see myself becoming lost in the drive to publish or perish. What was more, it increasingly seemed to me (and this impression only deepened in graduate school) that much of what passes for “scholarship” in the liberal arts and theology is little more than the mental masturbation of mediocre and derivative minds who wish to be thought brilliant and original, or else the dutiful hashing out of minutiae so tedious and inconsequential that they had thus far escaped the attentions of the legions of scholars hunting for publication fodder. Though I know there is a whiff of sour grapes here, I didn’t—and still don’t—relish the prospect of climbing on that treadmill.
So, I shelved my professorial aspirations, graduated with a history major and theology/Spanish double minor, and rapidly discovered that, if the advice about studying what you loved simply to show that you knew how to learn had ever been true, it wasn’t true any longer. (But that’s another chapter for another day).
If life had a second edition, and I could rewrite this chapter with the benefit of hindsight and Zoloft, what changes would I make?
On the one hand, some of my worries about the feasibility of a career in academia seem to have been overblown. In our honors program, four of us were nominated for a particular prize our senior year. The other three all landed tenure-track college teaching positions (two of them at SPU). Looking at them, it’s hard to avoid feeling like I missed the boat.
On the other hand, many of my initial reservations have only deepened, and SPU has become a microcosm of the crisis facing small, liberal-arts Christian colleges across the US: caught in the crossfire of the culture wars and facing plummeting enrollment as a college degree grows simultaneously more expensive and less valuable. Perhaps the ship will right itself, but currently, my old fantasies of being a college don at a small, Christian liberal arts university feel almost as antiquated as my even older fantasies of being a telegraph operator.
If I could go back and give my 18-year-old self a good pep talk, I think that I would tell me to study pre-med and go into brain research (specifically, sleep and depression). SPU had a 100% medical school acceptance rate at the time I graduated, which I did not appreciate at the time, but have definitely come to appreciate after seeing the struggles of friends and family to get into medical school. Having taught biology, I have discovered that science was a lot cooler than I had ever realized. I could have pursued a career that was lucrative, respected, and helpful. I could have avoided wandering in the “dark wood” for the last fifteen years without any obvious drawbacks.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Which brings us to the life lesson. The season finale of Bluey was a special 28-minute episode. Bluey, the main character, is upset because she has to move to a new city for her dad’s job. Her teacher reads her the story of the old Chinese farmer (which I read a version of myself when I was not much older than Elsie.)
“Once, there was a farmer who had a beautiful horse. His neighbors all admired his horse and praised his good luck. The farmer just said, ‘We’ll see.’
“One day, his horse escaped and ran away. The neighbors all said they were sorry for the farmer and pitied his bad luck. The farmer just said, ‘We’ll see.’
“Then, the horse returned, bringing with it three wild mares. The neighbors all praised the farmer’s good luck. The farmer just said, ‘We’ll see.’
“The next day, the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the new mares. He was thrown off and broke his leg. The neighbors said they were sorry and pitied the farmer’s bad luck. The farmer just said, ‘We’ll see.’
“The next day, the emperor’s men came to the village to conscript all the young men into the army. However, the farmer’s son was left behind because of his broken leg. The neighbors all praised the farmer’s good luck. The farmer just said, ‘We’ll see.’”
The End.
The moral of the story: I have spent a lot of the past fifteen years, and especially the past year and a half, angry. Angry at myself for not making different choices. Angry at God for seeming to slam doors shut and not open any windows, whatever Maria von Trapp said. Angry at a universe that is so manifestly unfair, even if I have been the beneficiary of its unfairness far more often than the victim. The first draft of this reflection was largely an expression of that anger. It took a cartoon dog and a Chinese farmer to remind me that the story is not over yet.
So, until then, we’ll see.
In the meantime, thanks again for your encouragements and notes. They mean more than you know.