Do you regret?

I don't regret a minute of it. I Got a BA in music and Spanish, and loved it, even at a pagan state school . Then my seminary education was far more than I ever dreamed. I was set to start in the doctoral program, then found out I was pregnant, so decided to postpone. A few babies later, I still plan to go back when the kiddos are in school. I don't even regret the little parenthesis in "my" plans. God is definitely the orchestrator of all, and His way is sooo much better than mine.

 

Which one--the one in Hattiesburg, Oxford, or Starkville?!?

 

My regret is that having a degree has not necessarily translated into a stable career for me. Also, I wish I could have made the sacrifice to attend grad school after I finished my bachelors back in the mid-80s.

 

Which one--the one in Hattiesburg, Oxford, or Starkville?!? </font>[/QUOTE]Well, not quite THAT pagan. It was University of South Alabama in Mobile. (Where I grew up)

 

Sad to say, but my own answer would be "YES".

Not that I am saying that the *quality* of the education I got was what I regretted, but the course of study is one that I wish I had not pursued. I wasted five years in seminary and did not finish, let alone that I have a bachelor's degree which gives me little vocational training in any areas outside of pastoral studies. If you aren't called to be a pastor, don't pursue theological degrees without another vocation that would support you. Unfortunately, I don't have any vocational training that would be beneficial to me in the workplace outside of a church, and I don't believe that God has opened the door for me to pursue the ministry (although I had tried to 'shoehorn' myself into thinking that I would be a church pastor when I don't have the talents/qualifications). Unfortunately for me, I did not realize this until I was well into my seminary training that I wasn't 'pastoral' material.

 

I dropped out of college when I got married but my husband has an engineering degree that has now been done away with. His 'job' was taken over by computers years ago....... I'm sure he'd tell you 'yes'.

 

I'm with Dr. Bob - a cup of coffee at Hardee's - can I have some of those grand sweet rolls?????

You are soooo fortunate to have Hardee's, used to frequent them often when in the midwest. They haven't reached our area yet :-(

Only regret I have in education is making it through a number of years of Christian college and not being required to take enough English courses to overcome my near failing high school days of punkhood.

 

It would be interesting to have an update on Felix's progress. Does he still post here?

Felix and anyone else, don't knock life experiences. They are valuable to yourself and others will benefit.

I think it would be a good idea if Pastors, Teachers and Doctors had to spend time in other fields for a year or two to get a wider perspective on people and the world we live in.

blessings

Sheila

 

It is possible my parents were right at the time. They wanted me to get a degree in something practical. They had dreams of their daughter becoming a medical doctor,a journalist, an engineer, possibly even some degree they didn't know the name of involving big computers that guaranteed a very high salary in the future.
Instead of all that I started to pursue 2 degrees on the nobody will ever pay you a salary for that list....

Ofcourse my parents also expected me to be married and a stay at home housewife/mom prior to 1985, meaning I would never have put that usefull degree into practice.

 

Moique,
I've been reading your posts for sometime now.How come you don't write? It seems to me you could come up with a church history from a european point of view for North Americans. You have all of this wonderful knowledge to share.You could even write articles for Christian magazines.

 

"How come you don't write?"
"
I do, my work even get's published a couple of times a year. All of it is in Dutch however.
In case you haven't noticed, I do all sorts of peculiar things with what used to be the English language, making me a less than perfect candidate for the American market.

To make matters worse, those aspects of churchhistory I excell at are usually the ones few want to here about.
My last article was about the powerstruggle between the Spanish Inquisition and the secular Spanish judiciary about who would be allowed to put witches on trial. The Inquisition claimed they had the monopoly on witchhunting, the secular authorities wanted to break that monopoly. The reason the Inquisition desperately clung to that privilege was to prevent witchhunts from taking place alltogether. They were certain that there was no witchcult in Spain and that letting the local authorities start investigations without inquisition oversight would lead to the death of many innocents.
They were right. The only time people were executed in Spain on witchcraft charges was when the Spanish Inquisition wasn't allowed to 'look over the shoulder' of the secular prosecutors, pointing out obvious facts that discredited the complete case under review.
Few Christian magazine editors are interested in articles about the Spanish Inquisition and those that are interested are only rarely interested in articles that have them act noble.
So my last article will only be published in a small conservative Roman Catholic magazine in Belgium.

 

And once again I typed; here where it ought to have been hear (first sentence second paragraph).

Dyslexia, the third reason I'm never going to break into the foreign language market.

 

I've enjoyed all of my schooling. M.Div. at TEDS, MA.counseling at LU, D.Min. at Gordon-Conwell.

My regret is that I didn't pursue a Ph.D. after earning my B.A. from Grace College.

We need a first-rate seminary or graduate school that will offer a Ph.D. track (3 years plus dissertation) after earning a B.A.

BJU offers it, but they aren't accredited. But they have the right idea.

A four year undergraduate degree with 2 years of Greek, 1 year of Hebrew, and 1 semester each of reading German and French would prepare students for Ph.D. work at any number of graduate schools. I wish I had had that kind of advice when I was in college.

The undergraduate degree should include Biblical Introduction courses, Systematic theology, Church history. [Two years of liberal arts courses, two years of "seminary" type courses as listed above, modern and biblical languages.]

This would be an awesome undergraduate degree!