Career Choices

Several afternoon hours were spent today in conversation with a new friend. She is a friend of a friend, and circumstances caused us to spend a few hours together.

She has a small child, but her total and absolute focus in life is an education. She is pursuing her second degree two days a week while the child is in daycare. She is driven by the intense need of tangible evidence of hours of hard work and thousands of dollars spent on a few pieces of paper that declare she will have a good education.

To each his own to an extent, but much of the time was spent by me listening to her tell me all the ways I could pursue my own degree. According to this 'fountain of wisdom', I will need a degree to get a job because: I certainly don't want my kids to be homeschooled for too many years. The need to be in a public school that can send a bus to pick them up so they can be with other children and I can have some free time to pursue my degree; one day the kids will all be gone and I will be fiftyish and bored and in need of work....etc......

It was blatantly obvious the a degree is the most important thing in her life. I am torn between feeling sorry for her, and being annoyed with myself for not speaking up about my choices. But I'm sure I would just have alienated her. She is so focused on her educational goals, she is missing the joy of motherhood.

I plan to have at least one more child. That equates to a good 20 years of homeschooling in my future. At that point, I will most likely have grandchildren. If I am in need of work (ha!) there is always Paul's business to help with. If at some point laws are tampered with to require homeschooling parents to have a degree, I can work hard and obtain one at that point. In the mean time, we have the freedom and ability to move to whatever state would accommodate our home education.

I dearly love my life and thank God so much for my career in motherhood and home education. I am so blessed! As a child I had two interests when thoughts would wander to 'what you want to be when you grow up'. It was a homemaker with lots of babies, or a teacher. I have been blessed with both! God is so good.