Advisory Capacity

When I was a college adviser to Freshmen (or Frosh if you prefer), I often suggested that they treat their college degree like a passport. It will admit them to many places where without a degree the doors would be closed. Really not bad advice.

I received a recent Magazine from one of my Alma Maters which talked about their department of Mathematics and Computer Science. It told of the various jobs held by graduates that did not particularly involve math or computers: Coach, Programmer (computer skills necessary), Teacher, Missionary, Administrator, Engineer, Researcher.

The Coach said that Problem solving, organizing data, and situational analysis are football-related skills that have allowed me to excel at every level, never more so than in the NFL. Another student with a Math Major went on to Uganda in the Peace Corps as a primary teacher trainer and also worked to help decrease the spread of AIDS.

This was comforting to me as I compared a degree with a diploma fifty years ago. Sure, education, majors and minors have changed but some things linger on as they should. Even though a yearning to serve in an advisory capacity may be a cop out, it can be much better than that.

We seniors, like it or not, can be advisers, knowingly or otherwise. What we say, how we say it, what our authorities are and the context itself are all important. This came to me from a grandfather about his granddaughter, four years old when she asked her mother what she was reading. She was reading the Proverbs. Here's what Anna says about God and what the bible tells us. Keep in mind that everything I [her mother] type is exactly how she says it:

God loves us and He's gonna give us strength, and He's so good. He's going to give us apples and pears. But the tree of evil, He doesn't want to give us. And He wants us to listen to Him . . .

And there was more. He wants us to listen to Him. Yes, He is there in an advisory capacity, the good kind, whether we are 4 or 104. Are we listening?