Welcome to High School, What is Your Vision?

Let’s talk about high school.  I love teaching high school because that is where I feel the action is.  So much hinges on the decisions made during high school.  In a way I think it is unfair, because most kids have no clue what they want to do, but they are expected to make this decision.  Most college students are also unsure, so if you aren’t sure you are not a freak.  In a perfect world you would know your career and your desired major.  Then you would take the best high school courses to make the transition to that field of study more easily.  You would then choose a college and a major in line with that exact career.

The problem is a concept of vision.  Look at the picture below taken from inside a forest:

Now look at the same forest from a different vantage point:

You can see that the higher vantage point allows you to see how large the forest actually is.  If I were lost I’d rather have a view that allows me to see more.  Career identification is a lot like this.  As you begin to interface with the working world, you will begin to see the immense career choices available to you.  There are thousands of jobs you can do.  If you take apart any organization you will see this.  Did you know that McDonald’s employs statisticians?  In the same way, IBM employs day care workers.  How do you get a clearer vision of what you want to be?

One thing is to just start paying attention to what you see around you.  You have access to quite a few adults who do many different things.  Ask them about their jobs, what they do, what they like and dislike about it, the conditions, the outlook, and the best way to get qualified to do such a job.  As you meet adults soak up as much as possible and you will get a clearer vision of what may be your dream job.  You are forcing yourself into a better vantage point that doesn’t appear fast enough if left to itself.  It takes effort to get a handle on what is a good career fit for you.

Volunteering at multiple organizations can help.  One student of mine volunteered with a local hospital twice a week.  He got a real look behind the scenes and found out that he didn’t want to be a doctor but rather a nurse.  In addition, by working in many different wards of the hospital he discovered the exact sub-field that he wanted to pursue.  When he went on to college, he sought a college with that exact major.  He is going to end up where he wants.

Your high school classes are a good indicator of career possibilities.  As you take your classes ask yourself if you enjoy the material and if you are good at it.   Competence and enjoyment are two powerful indicators of where we should be going.  They are mutually reinforcing.  When you are not competent in your job, people complain at you all day long, there is less pride in your work, and you will not be promoted.  This will lead you to be unhappy with your job no matter how much you initially enjoyed the job.  We need to have the basic skills required in order to pursue a college major.  A person weak in math should not pursue a math degree, nor should they pursue a career that demands a lot of math.

Hitting a Wall for Christmas

UC Berkeley

 Christmas can be an odd time for a college student.  Finals are usually completed, grades are in, and you are back at home with your family.  This can be difficult because for the past few months, you have had almost total control of your schedule and now you must fit in with the ebb and flow of family life.  For those of you living at home there can be a similar letdown as there is no longer an excuse (studying) for not going along with every family outing.  It can be unsettling to see how things seem to revert to feeling like the high school years and you can get to the point of wondering if anything has actually changed.  But that is not what is on my heart right now...

If you have been led by God, is it possible to fail?  

Another powerful emotion you may be battling is doubt.  If your grades were less than stellar or your interest in your major has waned, powerful doubts can arise.  Throw in a little parental pressure and it can get very stressful.

 God sometimes allows failure to prepare us for something later.  Moses got ahead of God’s timing and it forced him to run for his life (Exodus 2:11-15).  The above passage and Hebrews 11:24-27 seems to suggest that Moses discerned his purpose long before the burning bush. 

After a long time in the desert, he was ready to be used by God to lead Israel out of Egypt.   Moses learned to rely on God's power over his own.

Failures and the resulting lessons give us wisdom for something down the line.  When something goes wrong, then prayerfully examine what happened. Some questions have an answer that can only be comprehended by God Himself, so don’t be discouraged if you never figure it out.  You will always have some unanswered questions because God is infinite in His thinking and we are not (Isaiah 55:8-9) (1 Corinthians 13:9-12).

This is the hard part in chasing a dream.  Sometimes the chase is the dream (2 Cor 4:17).   The process of following God and knowing God are of more value than anything you will accomplish (Matthew 7:21-23). 

What happens when you hit a wall?  If you are going to be a doctor and you cannot pass your pre-med courses, there is a problem. Only a select few pre-med students are admitted to medical schools.   You may need to switch plans.  You are going to need stellar grades to be admitted to graduate school. If you are doing poorly in college, a self-analysis is needed. 
 

You may get called by God to do something really big. If you are submitted to the purpose of bringing glory to God these calls will come your way, so be ready.   Some of the most powerful ministries were mocked by outsiders, but they believed in the vision that was given to them by God.  They believed that if God commanded them to do it, He would provide all that was necessary for it to be accomplished (Philippians 4:19).  

 The difficulty is that only when a person is fully submitted to a close relationship with God and a heart to obey at all costs, will the vision be given (John 14:15-17).   God allows many mysteries to come into your life, so be ready to be flummoxed (Isaiah 55:9).  When God tells us to do something and we do it, we expect success, but God just wants us to do it and leave the results to Him.  You may be a small part in a long chain of events the leads to God being glorified.  You don’t always get to see the results of your effort, so you need to garner satisfaction from being faithful rather than seeing results (Hebrews 11:39-40).  

 When you are with God in Heaven, all will make sense and you will see the fruits of your obedience.  In fact you should desire that your acts of faith are noticed only by God, otherwise you are robbed of your true reward for that action (Matthew 6:2-4). This will be your crown.  If some things are beyond your ability for comprehension, force yourself to rest in the fact that He is in control and it all will make sense later.

             Until you are struck with a clear goal it is wise to walk the road God has you on now because He probably put you there (1 Corinthians 7:17).  God has something in store for you and it usually involves serving others in some capacity.  The word of God, Your gifts, abilities, experiences, personality and godly people who speak into your life all combine to show you where you should go.  You will need to show determination in the face of opposition once you have your marching orders. When sources outside the above mentioned are saying what you can and can’t do, you must ignore them (Psalm 1:1). 

 Following God is both exciting and scary, because you have given up the right to direct your steps as you see fit. Trusting Him with your life's direction is very scary, but when you focus on the object of your trust (Jesus) it becomes natural. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Crisis of Identity

College can trigger a crisis of identity.  The reason is that you were trying to fit in by being someone that God has not made you to be.  High school has a way of doing this as peer pressures tend to strongly force you to conform to something you are not.  The beauty is that in college there are few identifiable “types” as there were in high school, so this can be liberating, but it also can be disorientating.  College professors tend to enjoy their role of calling all of your beliefs into question, so for students of faith be ready to be challenged.  You may be mocked, but you should be ready to defend your reasons for your faith in a way that draws people to Christ instead of repelling them (1 Peter 3:15).  You may have never been forced to do this, so take this opportunity to delve deeply into the scriptures to find out what you believe and why you believe it.  There are a number of good programs out there, check with your pastor.  I have found the discipleship training materials of the Navigators as a great source of training.  For those of you who have left town to go to school, you should develop a new home church where you are going to school.  This will give you access to people like you who can support you in the spiritual battles that you WILL face in college.  Public universities tend to encourage any philosophy except Christianity, so be ready.  Charles Malik in his article titled “A Christian Critique of the University” found numerous areas where Christian values were counter to the basic culture on most college campuses.  A Christian college allows you to escape some of these pressures, but not all of them.  For the rest of you attending a public university, it will serve you to think of college as a mission field. 

            For those who have unclear goals, you are in the majority.  If you have the ability to do college, go for it.  Any degree will give you a broad set of options, as there are careers out there that do not require a specific degree, just that you do have one.  As you seek God, things will become clearer, but be prepared to walk in a bit of a haze.  God doesn’t always explain himself and make your whole life trajectory clear, He often just lets you know what you should be doing now.  You can live out your faith through many careers and God needs people everywhere to reach people who need Him (1 Cor 7:17).  Working in ministry is not for everyone, but if you do your education will help your ministry as well as your impact in ministry.  If you have been given the ability to do college (and only a few have it) you should not turn your back on this gift.   For those of you who have not declared a major, use your classes to help point the way, ask yourself as you take these classes: “Do I enjoy this?” and “Am I good at this?”  An affirmative in BOTH above questions can lead you to a major and a career path.

The Gospel of Self-Determination Part II

Every graduation speech hinges on somebody invoking the gospel of self-determination, “If you can dream it, you can do it.”  These types of sayings can lead to disappointment and failure, because not all accomplishment are open to all people.  Relentlessly hard work is necessary for any great accomplishment, but these goals must be correctly attained.  College is going to be a grind, when you begin your career it will be a grind, when you get married at times it will be a grind, and when you have children… you get the point. 

            How exactly does a dream die?  Most high school freshmen boys will raise their hand when I ask which of them will be playing a pro sport, but by the senior year the dream is over as most have not put in the overwhelming effort and time to get to the point where they get courted by colleges.  The problem is that the damage has been done. Kids, now young adults, who thought they were going to play a pro sport put little stock in working hard at their academics to prepare for the rigors of college.  For the athletes who make it to the college level athletically, they will have to wait until a later step in the filtration process to have that bubble burst.  An NCAA report by Clint Newlin in 2011 found that For every 10,000 high school senior varsity football players only eight will be drafted by the NFL. Furthermore, anyone who casually follows football knows that many of these draftees will be cut within the first few weeks of the preseason, so the actual probability is even more staggering.

Many students do seem to understand on some level the odds that face them, so they talk about a backup plan.  This plan is usually academic in nature, but the problem with this mentality is that students see it as a back-up plan and fail to put enough time into their studies.   This leads to subpar skills that make doing the challenging work of college impossible. 

            Simply put, the lower your skills, the more often you will need tutoring in the form of professors, study groups or even hired help.  If you had C’s in high school, you will probably struggle because your skills won’t be there for you.  You will need to devote more time to the process of studying because you have not developed study habits that can allow you to learn information more quickly.  The more you know, the more you can skip things you already know.  This gives some people an advantage over you.  The equalizer in all this is laziness, meaning theirs. While they party and sleep in, you will be studying. You should be able to make up the difference through hard work.

The Gospel of Self-Determination

Just as bitterness can flow from unforgiveness it can also flow from a sense of shattered plans and disappointment. The world says that you can do anything that you want if you just believe in yourself, work hard and don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do it.  There is a lie in all this.  In the book of Acts, Saul was dragging Christians off to jail; he was a man to be feared.  On the way to Damascus he was converted by the presence of Jesus.  He was led, blind into the city and awaited a brave Christian to pray over him. Ananias was the man that God chose, but he was scared (Acts 9:13-16). That last phrase blows me away, “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”  God wants us to lay our lives at His feet; we don’t get to call the shots.

When I think about the gospel of self-determination “you can do anything you want to do, just believe in yourself” I’m envisioning some star baseball player saying how slow and small he was when he was a kid.  He will say he didn’t listen to the “haters and discouragers,” worked hard, never gave up, and got what he wanted.  This is true, but only for him and a select few, but not for the tens of thousands of other football players whose dreams perished along the path to glory.  The baseball star fails to mention is that he was extremely fortunate to have many things fall into place.  John Holway, in his book The Baseball Astrologer and other Weird Tales analyzed pro baseball players birthdays and found that that ball players have a 50-60% better chance of making it to the big leagues if they were born in August.  This would make a ball player the oldest player on a team when they all start playing t-ball and naturally have a physiological head start.  This player would usually play more, ride the bench less, and be more likely to play all-stars, thereby extending playing time.  This and many other silent advantages built talent and encourage even more practice.  All pro players have worked really hard, but they have also benefitted from many unseen factors that they do not understand. 

The lottery is for fools, because the probability of winning is extremely low.  It would be foolish to neglect a career to play the lottery every day.  Just as it is foolish to put your hopes on the lottery, it is also foolish to put your hopes on anything resembling a lottery in the way that it works (Proverbs 28:19).  Some careers are essentially a lottery, whereby only a few make it past the many filtration barriers. Wouldn’t it stink to be one of the few athletes who made it only to have some freak injury sideline you?  This happens every Sunday. 

Accepting our Lot in Life

There is a great children’s book called A Frog Thing by Eric Drachman, and it wonderfully illustrates an essential concept for you.  In this story a young frog named Frankie has the audacious dream to fly like a bird someday.  Determined to see his dream come to fruition, Frankie works tirelessly to “practice” his flying. His parents and friends lovingly try to explain that flying is a bird thing, but he is undeterred.

Finally, the reality and disappointment of the broken dream dawn on Frankie. In that sad moment he witnesses a baby bird falling into the pond.  Knowing that he must act fast, Frankie dives in, saves the baby, and safely delivers it to her mom.  The grateful mom rewards Frankie by taking him for an awe inspiring flight.  Amazed, Frankie’s parents and friends congratulate him on achieving his dream of flying.  Frankie responds that he realizes that he is a frog and understands that he will never fly, but being a good swimmer is a gift to be cherished. 

            If Frankie had sworn off swimming because he couldn’t fly then that baby bird would have died.  There is a delicate balance between going after your goal and understanding your gifts and limitations.  You have been fashioned specifically for a purpose that leads to your maximum happiness (Jeremiah 29:11) (John 10:9-11).

    If you go after something else you may miss out on something better.  This something better is going to take hard work, so don’t wimp out.  Do not let something that is hard, make you feel that it is unattainable; you will have to work hard to accomplish things that matter.   You must listen to the voice of God to point the way, because the way you feel is right may not be what is best for you (Proverbs 14:12).

           

Chasing the Dream Part II

            I developed a passion for sprinting in elementary school that began in second grade when my teacher signed me up to do the 100 yard sprint for the school Olympics.  On the day of the race I was wore brown corduroy pants and Traxx shoes from K-mart.  They lined me up with a bunch of the boys, the gun went off, and I ran for all I was worth.  I won, and a legend was born, at least in my mind.  I honestly believed that I was the fastest kid in school all through elementary school.  My number of wins diminished throughout elementary school, but I still believed in the legend.  My speed, and with it my athletic confidence, left me in junior high school.  I played no sports until my sophomore year of high school when the track coach asked me to come join the team.  At the time I was honored, but as I look back we had a small team and he asked every kid to join.  He put me on hurdles, and I stuck with it because I felt he saw something special in me that would make a good hurdler.  Looking back, I noticed he put everyone who joined on hurdles because he knew if he could train hurdlers and pole-vaulters he could win most of the meets.

            I really worked at it and my technique became almost flawless.  I won a lot of races just because of that.  Over time I got better and by the senior year I just barely missed the school record.  I pictured myself a budding Olympian, but there was this nagging problem, I was not super-fast.  My heart was finally broken at Mount Miguel High School when this kid with awful technique beat me by a good 10 feet.  I was crushed, but in a way I was upset at myself because I knew the truth.  In the back of my mind I knew that I had fair speed but not blazing speed.  This was my broken dream moment. All the signs were there but I just got wrapped up in the fantasy of it all and chose to overlook the obvious.        

It’s not bad to play sports but it is silly to plan to play sports as a profession.  This also goes for professional singers, actors and the like.  These dreams or fantasies are killing us as a society and they create false hopes (Proverbs 12:11).  The odd thing about all this is that often we know it is a false hope, but don’t admit it to ourselves.  It is easy to just look past a glaring truth if you do not want to deal with the realities of that truth (Romans 1:18-20).  Our dreams must line up with something beyond us to truly fulfill us.  If we allow God to shape our dreams, we will be most happy (John 10:10).  Anything else is looking past the glaring truth.

Chasing the Dream

Philippians 2:5-1

When truth is adjusted just slightly, it can actually sound better than the truth.  There is an insidious force out there called self-determination that can fool you into false thinking about your abilities.   Self-determination is the idea that we can get what we want on our own, but this belief is the ultimate rejection of God.  Self-determination is encouraged in our society, because everywhere you go, you will hear the mantra that anything is possible through hard work.  This seems logical because it seems there are examples of people who have remade themselves into something great through sheer self-determination.  The truth about the nature of success is much more complicated. 

We often talk about the “American Dream” where anyone can become great.   This just seems to make sense, but it is a slight adjustment of the truth. The oft quoted Biblical verse, “God helps those who help themselves” is not Biblical.  It came from one of Aesop’s fables and was later popularized by Ben Franklin.  The self help mantra sounds so good, but is exactly opposite of what the Bible teaches (James 4:13-17).  The reason the saying makes sense is that it jives with a part of us that does not want to submit to God.  We do not like the sound of the word submit because it means there can be unpleasant obligations.  Jesus welcomes you into this submission, but offers solace for all your troubles (Matthew 11:29-30). 

God has created you for a relationship with Him and part of this relationship is dependence on Him for things that are not under your control.  In reality, very little is under your control. As I get closer to God, I am becoming more amazed at the regularities of life as real and true gifts.  My job is a gift, my children are a gift, and the food in my refrigerator is a gift.    Hard work is a Biblical command that carries logical benefits, but you need to understand the results are in His hands (Proverbs 19:21). 

Poverty can befall anyone (Job 1:8-12).  We say that those who are poor are that way by choice because they are lazy, have an addiction etc., but we often utilize this thought process to shuck our duty to help those in need. This is flat-out wrong thinking because we have a duty to serve the poor and oppressed (Matthew 25:41). Don’t get caught up in deciding if people are worthy to be helped.  If God is telling you to give, you should give (Proverbs 14:12-14).