Philip's Tunnel to Nowhere 3

Last week I accepted admittance to the University of Michigan’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education.   This is sort of the culmination of two-plus years of soul searching about career stuff, and my goals have changed subtly since I first applied there.  My original purpose was to become an on-campus career advisor, and that’s still a reasonable goal.  However, lately I’ve been thinking of this step less as professional school to prepare me for a different “real world” career, and more as an excuse to get me within arm’s reach of academia.

The Michigan program is good for that, because it seems to be more research-oriented than a masters in student affairs.  My trip to Ann Arbor in March was good for opening my mind to this direction, because I got to speak with at least one of the professors about his research.  It’s also conceivable that this could be a step toward realizing my sometimes-flirtation with getting a sociology PhD and going into that discipline.  Certainly higher education plays a great role in societal change, and I expect to be able to take one or more grad-level soc. courses while I’m in the higher ed program.

So I’m pretty excited about starting this fall!  Just need to find an internship.

I figured this blog needed an update…. other than school, not too much of note is going on.   Alabama Christian Freaks is planning a sock drive for Birmingham’s homeless on June 6; I’ll update that link in the header with some info.  I’m grinding a lot of poker tournaments and lamenting that the working world sees playing poker seriously as maybe a half-step up from being incarcerated in respectability.   It’s silly, really.  I’m making money applying my quantitative skills, in some ways managing a small business, but because I don’t show up in a cubicle every morning at 9:00 it’s not valid.  Oh well, hopefully going to school will smooth over all that.

It’s been way too long since I’ve updated here.

It looks like things may work out for me to start the higher education grad school program that I’ve been admitted to since 2008.   Mostly I just need to find an internship so I feel good about taking on significant debt to make a career change.  At the moment I feel like I’ll struggle even more in the job market when I get out as I’m struggling in the internship market at the moment!

But anyway, if I am in school in the fall, that will severely limit the amount of time I have for a couple of avocational/semi-vocational interests.   One is poker, but that’s not really the theme of this blog.   The other is underground youth outreach and culture.   I will definitely continue in this interest, and hopefully can meet some people in my new destination who share it.  If I do go on to study sociology — something that this higher ed program could lead to, actually — then youth culture will definitely continue to be an interest.

For now, just trying to be faithful to build up Alabama Christian Freaks and see where that leads.  (Come hang out with us April 24 if you’re near Birmingham!)

My career goal* is to research and teach about youth culture, emphasizing youth subcultures, with the goal of informing the church to help it communicate the Gospel.

This is just a slight rewording of what I’ve been pondering lately, but this isn’t Jeopardy so it probably makes sense to change it from a question to a statement.

*Tentatively.

I should probably get my latest news up here so I can point people here instead of writing long e-mails.

In early 2009 I was accepted into the Masters program at the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education. This M. Ed. would open the door to working at a college in many capacities, but specifically in my case what interests me is working in career services, advising college students on how to meet career goals. It’s a great program (ranked #2 in the latest USN&WR, down from #1 in 2008) and I’m greatly honored to be accepted. But for various reasons I deferred starting the program until Fall 2010.

This has given me some time to address a nagging feeling that, although an M. Ed. would be a very good career path, it might not be the best career path. Back in May I formulated my aspirations in the following question:

What would be a career path for someone who wants to study youth culture (and especially subcultures) as an academic with the goal of informing the church to help it communicate the Gospel?

I’m not sure I’ve found the answer, but I’ve come up with a plan that’s got me pretty excited. As I understand it, Fuller Seminary is one of the leaders in the field of missiology — they even have a School of Intercultural Studies. They also happen to have a professor who’s one of the leading researchers in youth culture. So it seems like a great combination where I can go study both youth ministry and the theory of cross-cultural outreach, with the goal of integrating both into my eventual academic career.

They don’t have a doctorate program, so getting a Masters would be a prerequisite to moving on to a Ph. D. At this point I’d say I’m about 80% sure I’m at least going to apply, and then weigh options accordingly. I have until March to decide to enroll at Michigan or not.

It’s a little daunting to envision paying (for at least one year) for a degree that, once I finish it, won’t qualify me to do anything else but pursue another degree! Stay tuned for details.

I feel like something spiritual is bubbling just beneath my surface, but it hasn’t yet exploded into enough to actually affect the way I live.

I should step back and explain. A few years ago — actually, starting in 2000, to be precise — I started praying in the conviction that God somehow, in ways far beyond my comprehension, wanted me to be involved in reaching out to those on the margins. At the time it was the kids in Harvard Square who were the focus of those prayers, and over the next few years I came to be involved in doing a street outreach in that particular setting. At this point I was continuing to pray for the next step, convinced that somehow this sort of thing was my life’s calling.

Then in 2005 I had a profoundly negative experience that we’re not going to discuss here, except to say that I never processed it very well.

So from then, I had a ready excuse for not pursuing that “calling” — now that word was a cruel mockery of my previous naivete, but not nearly as distasteful to me as “ministry”. At first I was recovering from the pain. Then I was in the same geographical location where I’d been hurt, so I didn’t feel that I could start up any sort of “underground” outreach without conflicting with the people who’d hurt me. Then I moved to my hometown, and didn’t know anyone else with interest in brainstorming ways to collaborate to do this sort of project. And now I live in Memphis and am in the same boat.

I already classified these as excuses, but to be honest, I’m not even sure if that’s the best way to describe them, especially that last one. There is some validity there. I really don’t believe that God wants us to be lone rangers, and I really in some sense believe that if I were supposed to be acting on these thoughts and impulses, God would already have put me in a place with people who share these values. I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to work, right? That’s how it worked when I prayed and ended up finding people doing a sort of outreach I didn’t yet even know existed. But so far, despite a couple of forays into building up

[EDIT: I realized months later that I never finished this paragraph. Let's go with this: despite a couple of forays into building up a community, including making some contacts in the state's largest city a couple of hours away, nothing really ever materialized.]

So what brings this to my mind, rather than just retreating into a mundane world where I think about college football or poker or whatever brings some little modicum of excitement to my life, is that I’ve been slowly reading that Tony Jones book I mentioned in my last post. (I’m reading it slowly because frankly, I get more interested in other stupid stuff and don’t think to read it.) To be honest, that book makes me feel wistful, as though I missed out getting in on the ground floor of some huge movement because I just wasn’t creative enough or committed enough to be one of the early adopters. (That’s a silly way to feel, but I feel it about career issues and entrepreneurship so it’s natural I would apply that to spiritual issues too.) Also, yesterday I happened to read a post from Dan Kimball that reminded me how much I enjoy hanging out in certain places and settings with an evangelistic intent, albeit a vaguely-defined one.

I stress that italicized part — though of course, I’m not talking about beat-people-over-the-head evangelism, rather about hanging out with the intent of discussing spirituality in a positive and non-threatening way — because I’ve been hanging out in those places now. I hang out in the hipster coffee shops in the artsy part of town. That’s where I do most of my work! But I’m painfully, excruciatingly aware that I don’t actually know anyone in those settings. It’s not like I’m meeting people and talking about music, or art, or politics, or whatever, much less talking about spirituality.

In any event, ultimately it’s my responsibility to pray about this stuff, not to try to force something into happening.

I’m restarting this blog again. Here’s why. And the latest on my career/living status.

(continue reading…)