Major

What are you going to major in, Jason? That was the question that I posed to Jason when he decided to go to Mississippi College.

Both Jason and Jeremy were right beside us when we said our good-byes to our families and departed for Tours, France for one year of language study. Jason was three years old, and Jeremy was about to turn two. The boys were troopers as they had already experienced a barrage of injections for every known communicable disease, and they had made it through 14 weeks of orientation at Callaway Gardens. The good-byes were difficult as we were taking the only two grandchildren on either side of the family. And we could not tell them exactly how long it would be before we would return to the USA.

We enrolled Jason in preschool, and, of course, they only spoke French. We hired a Polish immigrant to be a nanny for Jeremy in our apartment all day Monday through Friday. She did not speak French, and her English was limited to a vocabulary of about two dozen words, so Jeremy spoke Polish with her.

When we moved to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, both boys were enrolled in a French preschool. When we transferred to Upper Volta we lived between three villages in the bush, so the boys spoke a mixture of French and More’, the local language of the villagers. On visits to Ouagadougou to buy food and supplies the language was always in French. In hotels and restaurants, they all spoke French.

The previous three paragraphs are a set up for stating Jason’s response to my question above. He said that he would be majoring in French. One can understand why I laughed at his response. He had been speaking French for years, and he was going to major in it in college?!?

I asked him what kind of job he thought he could get with a BA degree in French besides teaching French in a high school. He was stumped, and after a long pause, I said, “If you expect your mother and me to participate in paying for your college then you will minor in Business. He revolted and said, “Aw, dad, I took accounting in high school and it was the most boring class ever.” Nevertheless, he declared his major in French and minor in business. Early during his studies, he discovered that he could get a combination Foreign Languages/Business Administration degree.

Jason enjoyed his studies so much that he also studied Russian, and when he completed his degree, he enrolled in the University of Memphis for his International MBA. Changed his mind about studying business!

Jeremy was only a year behind Jason in school, and when I asked Jeremy what he was going to major in, he said, “History. And, dad, I am going to minor in business.” I smiled.

Actually, Jeremy did not need any of our participation in paying for his college as he was a National Merit Scholar, and he wound up with more financial aid than he could use! But it was good to know that he was listening in to our conversation with Jason.

It is great now to reflect on some of the occasions when we had to help our kids to make the right decision without taking away their responsibility to own their decisions. And it is fun to think about some of the conversations that they are having with their children during this season of life.

How rich we are in that our Creator gave us minds and hearts to make decisions and gave us the challenge of bearing the responsibility of owning our decisions.