The Tuesday after Labor Day is traditionally the first day of school here. For forty straight years either my wife, children or I would head out the door on this Tuesday morning to start another school year. That didn’t happen today.
It felt weird. It isn’t that no-one in the family went to school today, just that those who did don’t live here anymore.
I must admit, I miss school. Which I am sure puts me in the minority. I still wonder what it would be like to go back, to pick up another degree, just for the fun of it.
You probably have done the math and figured out most of those forty years of first days didn’t have students going out the door on that fist day of school. More often than not it would be a teacher (or two) or a school administrator. Whatever the role, teacher or student or teachers’ boss, the excitement was still there. Today there was no excitement.
I never aspired to a career in education or academia, though it was suggested to me on more than one occasion. I just like to learn
I gave serious consideration a couple of years ago to getting a doctorate. There would have been no benefit in terms of employment, but I had this desire to learn. To see whether I still had what it takes, I signed up for one course. I was disappointed
Oh, I learned, but that learning came from my own endeavors. My professor seemed disengaged (admittedly it was the tail end of the pandemic). I think I may have known more about the subject than he did. My fellow students, who I had a chance to observe and engage with in seminars and online discussions, seemed to be very weak scholastically- not what I was expecting at that level.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Ten years previously, when I was working on a masters degree, I had done a lot of marking of undergraduate papers. To me they didn’t seem up to what I thought of as secondary school level, let alone university. Perhaps in the quest to allow more people access to higher education, standards have been lowered.
All of which is an aside. I did not head out to school this morning, even though I wish I had. It wasn’t the academic challenge that convinced me not to proceed. I had no problem in excelling in the course I took – though I will admit my effort nosedived towards the end of the course when I saw that no-one else seemed to be taking it seriously.
I can do the scholarship. It was the time commitment that convinced me not to go any further. I like my life as it is.
To earn a doctorate I’d have to give up some of what I do now. I prayed about it, but didn’t feel God releasing me from anything. So higher education is on hold, At least for now – maybe I’ll reconsider when I reach my eighties.
But on this Tuesday after Labor Day, I did so wish I was heading off to school.
random thoughts from lorne 
Pardon me Lorne. The new edition is 2024. It is my previous edition, of three, that was 2018. That one came out the year after I retired. I’ve done three editions. I’m taking the book over from an old mentor who has authored, in part, all eleven editions.
After I retired I considered going back to school to take an MDiv and possibly become a minister if I made it all the way through. I got great references from two friends who were ministers, got accepted, and took one class just like you.
The class was a lot of fun and as I recall I got an A. The other students were interesting and seemed to be a good and thoughtful bunch. The prof was an enthusiastic former United minister, a friend, who had switched to Presbyterian, and shortly after the class became the Dean at VST.
I prayed as well about the path I was embarking on. I decided that I was being too self-interested in following my own interests and desires when I was already senior in my old management profession. I was choosing to begin again when I was already in a good position to contribute for the benefit of others. I was choosing to be greedy for myself when I could be contributing for the benefit of others. So, I let it go.
Now our new Managing Cultural Differences text, 11th edition, 2018, has just come out. I wrote about half. It’s focus is international leadership. Routledge says it’s their top selling management text. And I am using my management expertise on an ongoing basis to facilitate social action in our local community. It’s the power of prayer, and listening for an answer, I guess.