I have ideal circumstances for pursuing an MBA:

• Low expenses
• Good income & benefits
• Few family obligations
• Right kind of intelligence

I am not enrolled in any secondary education program. I have considered it often but I have never actually begun the process. I am not sure why, except that I don’t want to begin such a project without feeling confident God wants me to do it, and I have not felt that confidence.

If I were in an academic program right now, I probably wouldn’t be working on the project that I now have three days to finish. I wouldn’t have time to do it, and I would have told my boss so outright or given him a schedule sufficiently extended that some other option would have been pursued.

The urgency of this project, or of wanting to work on it but being constantly diverted, would have my mind in shambles now if not for the previoiusly scheduled week of vacation this month. The project itself is exactly the kind of thing I enjoy doing, and the latest fruit of the skills that first got me hired with this company.

In May 2006 I was contacted by a company I never heard of in a place I never heard of to work for them as a temp, because they had found “Microsoft Access” in my resume online. My resume did not feature Microsoft Access; it appeared on there only because while I was overkilling a summer project at the university library I learned a bit about Access and had nothing much else to put on my resume.

Then I got a different, full-time job at the company because my temp contract was running out and they did not want to lose me. I had nothing specific to commend me for the actual job I was given. Then I was assigned a job I might not have taken if offered because they decided I would have it.

So I have used very little deliberate initiative in getting where I am in my career. What’s more, except for this latest position, I have had little on paper to justify the jobs I have held. This makes me generally uncomfortable; if I were to lose my job for any reason, I don’t know that I could get a job that paid as well or I enjoyed as much, since my credentials seem to be in-house word of mouth as much as proven experience.

I feel like I really ought to get some serious training before I get stuck at the end of a trail of jobs that don’t quite suit me but were handed to me, and the road has run out because word of mouth will only get you so far before some asks to see your papers of entitlement.

This project I am working on now could put my name in the ear of the next person to hire me. Or it could wind up as an eccentricty, a project the worth of which depends completely on the peculiar setting it has in the current corporate culture.

I’d rather something a little more certain. I’d like a guarantee that I can find a job at or above my current pay level. How can someone with an MBA ever lack employment? But I have not gotten where I am on guarantees. I’ve worked hard in the job I had, entertaining only a vague notion of how to take the next step, and there’s been an unexpected element in taking on each new role that I attribute unreservedly to God.

Some people I know would say there’s no reason to get superstitious. I’ve been recognized as a able and diligent worker and that’s credentials enough to justify any career. There’s no need to attribute divine intervention to felicitous surprises.

And part of me agrees. It’s not like God made ten thousand armed men flee before me, or let me know I could be stronger than anyone if I let my hair grow long. He hasn’t really guaranteed that he will keep me moving up the career later, so with all due appreciation for his contributions so far, I’d like to go guarantee my future with a degree.

I have said, with the brazen indifference of the young, that I don’t rely on my retirment benefits, as there’s no saying they will be available and meaningful when I need them. Just lately that’s become a truism. So, today, what will I trust my future to? God, to whom I so casually commit my fragile senility? Or the achievments of my youth, waiting to be seized?