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| 2 disciples leaving their fish and nets to follow Jesus. Image source. |
Remember back when I was in college and I came to China on a mission trip? When I was 100% devoted to Jesus, and a bunch of the other students on the trip were talking about how they were planning to be missionaries in the future. Like, long-term, called-by-God, all that. I had never considered that before- I planned to just live my normal white American life- but I believed God was in charge and it wasn't my decision. If God said I should move to some strange country and be a missionary, then that was that.
I was worried, actually. I was worried that God would "call" me to drop out of college and become a missionary immediately.
Fortunately, God didn't, and I stayed in school a while longer and got my BS and MS degrees. Then came to China.
Now all these years later, I think about that again, and I'm like HOLY CRAP, HOLY CRAP do you know how bad that would have been? If I didn't have a college degree? Do you know how much harder everything would be? For the rest of my life...
All the full-time jobs I've had- no chance I could have gotten them without a college degree. All that job interviews I've ever gone to- nope, they wouldn't have given me the chance with no degree. I know that now, I'm an adult, I know how the real world of jobs works. I didn't know ANYTHING back when I was in college. Only a life of academic success, always being the top of my class, accepted to all the colleges I applied to (except MIT). Authority figures always gave me opportunities, gave me a chance to prove myself, and always were impressed at my intelligence. I didn't know how hard it would be for me to even find a entry-level job. I didn't know about the paradox where you can't get a job because you don't have work experience, but you can't get work experience because nobody will give you a job. You guys, it was hard for me even with an MS degree. Turns out job interviews aren't about whether or not people are impressed with my raw talent in math. They're about a company trying to find a person to fill a certain role. If the company is looking for someone with a certain amount of experience I don't have, yeah maybe it's not "fair" to me but so what? That's not something the company concerns itself with.
I did it, somehow I did it. I'm working full-time as an engineer in China. (Been doing this for a couple years now and it's going great.) That was my goal. But wow, can you imagine? Can you imagine if "God" had "called" me to drop out of college?
I was so naive back then. I knew nothing about how the real world works.
Sure, I knew that it would be "harder" to get a job if I had no degree, but that was just a vague word- "harder." I've done a lot of hard things in my life; I like challenges. I didn't get that it wouldn't be that kind of "harder"; it would be "harder" as in, I'm completely ineligible for the interesting engineering jobs I want, I'm stuck in some low-paying thing that requires way more people skills than I have. For my whole life. And maybe I could go back to school someday, but it wouldn't be like going to school as an 18-year-old, it would be with all the responsibilities of living an adult life, on top of the classes and homework.
How easily we threw around the idea of "leaving the nets and following Jesus" back then. We didn't know anything.
I prayed, on that mission trip in China back then. I worried, because a mission trip seemed like the kind of setting where God might "call" people. I didn't want to drop out of college. I really really didn't want to.
My reasons? Mainly that studying math and engineering was (is) a huge part of my identity. I identify as an engineer (even when I worked as an English teacher when I first came to China, I still told people "I'm actually an engineer"), and so it made sense that I should be in college, majoring in engineering. If I left that behind, I would have to reevaluate my identity. Ooooh, was I making it an idol? Was I finding my identity in STEM instead of in Jesus?
Also, I didn't want to drop out of college because my classmates might think some sexist thoughts about what women aren't good at. Did God understand that? It wasn't just about me; I'm a representative of women in engineering, whether or not I want to be.
And I didn't want God to "call" me because then I would have to tell people. I would have to tell my parents, who paid for my entire education. Of course they would have tried to talk me out of it. They would have told me having a college degree makes a huge difference. They would have said a lot of things that were true about the real world, but which I wouldn't have been able to understand, with my privileged life and radical Christian missions ideology. Education handed to me so easily that I took it for granted, and Christian leaders preaching about how wonderful and beautiful it is to give up everything for God, to suffer for Christ, "it's hard but it's worth it." I had no idea what I was talking about.
Those were my reasons, back then. Finding my identity in my STEM ability, feeling a duty to defy sexist stereotypes, and the fear of telling my parents. Those were the reasons I hoped God wouldn't force me to quit school. It never occurred to me to think about the consequences for my career, consequences that would follow me for the rest of my life.
Would I have done it? Well... here's what probably would have happened, if God "called" me: I would have convinced myself/ my parents would have convinced me that God meant I should finish undergrad first, and then go off and be a missionary. Which I believe, from my current vantage point of being a real adult with a real job, would have been okay. Having a BS degree makes life much easier than not having one. That would have been okay, in terms of future job prospects and my financial situation.
(Pretty similar to what I actually ended up doing, except I stayed in school long enough to get an MS, and God didn't "call" me- I came to China because I wanted to.)
I was 100% committed to Jesus back then, so if I really believed Jesus wanted me to quit school, I would have done it. But I don't believe there was ever really a chance of that happening, because I can't imagine how I could actually be so certain that's what Jesus wanted. It's much more likely I would be certain that he wants me to go to a particular country but I don't know the details of the timeline. In which case I would finish school first, because that makes sense. Because that's how it typically works. When my friends said they're going to be missionaries someday, they meant after they graduated college.
I was so naive back then, back when I wanted to "give up everything for Jesus" as if that was some beautiful adventure, complete with romanticized suffering that would "draw me closer to God" and let me experience his [sic] deep love and how wonderful it is to rely on him and know him.
And yes, I was naive when I actually did make the decision to move to China. I came here right after graduation, and I became an adult here. And it's been hard. Show up as an immigrant with no full-time work experience and expect to find a job. That's why I was stuck teaching English at first. It's been hard.
I don't regret anything, because I love my life and it's not useful to wonder about if I should have done things differently in the past. I'm proud of myself for learning Chinese and working as an engineer at a Chinese company. I love my Chinese husband.
But wow. I really didn't know anything back then.
And wow, I think about how easy it was for me to imagine God "calling" me to drop out of college. I didn't get how big of a deal that would be- how bad of a decision. I didn't get that it would affect my career for the whole rest of my life. We were just kids- privileged kids on fire for God. We didn't have any idea what we were talking about.
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Related:
I Didn't Count the Cost Before I Moved To China
Runaway Radical: The Stories You Can't Tell In Church
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