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{Warning: this blog does not adhere to the A.D.D. rules of bloggery. Tough beans.}

Everyone knows the scenario: someone went to college, got a degree, and now they work at Starbucks (we used to say McDonald’s when I was younger). How does this happen?

Usually what I hear is that the major they chose isn’t something they are truly interested in, and so their motivation is low to work in that field. So now they are ‘taking some time’ to figure it out. Hey man, Junior College is a great place to inexpensively figure that out. If you can’t come up with it in a couple of years, then maybe you should reconsider going to college at all.

What?!?! That’s blasphemy in most households, including the one I grew up in. “Even if you don’t get a degree in something you care about, most employers just want to see a degree so they know you can finish something–so stick with it. And get that dead-end-whatever job. At least its a job!”

“But, uh, that takes a lot of hard work, and, well, I don’t really feel like it right now. What’s the point?”

The point is: unless your parents are going to take care of you forever (which they shouldn’t unless you are disabled), then you’re gonna work hard in life one way or the other. That’s the way of things. College is awesome if you know what you want to do. Use your time there to learn things that will get you to where you want to go. Otherwise, you’re just allowing them to use you. Its a big business. They’re happy to take your money and turn you loose on the world…they don’t care if you work at Starbucks.

If you’re lost, or you just don’t see a major that can be applied to your truest interests, then you will work hard as well. You will still have to study, and excel, and accomplish. It may be ‘unconventional’, but it can lead to a fulfilled life of work. But again, you have to use everything available to you to feed your mission. Not somebody else’s. You make your own way.

If you are just plain lazy, then you better hope to God you are extremely lucky. More on that later. Just know this: in the old old old days, you would have been the first to go. Hard labor. Starvation. Dead. No one missin’ ya, either. And there won’t be room for you in the future, the way things are going.

But for now, no mission? No idea what you want to do? I challenge this. You already know. And there are skills you naturally have that can be turned into an entire life of work that you probably aren’t thinking of. Here’s the formula:

N + I = W

[N]atural proclivity: this is the stuff that you are naturally good at. The things that are easy for you to do, and do well, whereas others might find them a struggle. It may not be the most exciting thing about you, but, its how you were made. Not necessarily skills; more so, intellectual and interpersonal understandings (everything from ‘good at math’ to ‘good with people’).

[I]nterest: this is what you really care about. No really care about. Not what someone wants you to care about. The thing you spend all your time thinking about, and end up doing anyways, whether or not you get paid for it. ‘Joy’ would be the word associated with this.

[W]ork: the thing(s) you do, that other people can’t, but they need someone to, so they are willing to pay you to do it.

Imagine a village, in the middle of nowhere. There are things that people need done so that life can go on in this village. One guy fixes shoes, one gal teaches children, one guy saddles horses, one gal cultivates herb gardens. All things people need in the village. If everyone only fixes shoes, then, there’s a problem. But, there is a natural process that occurs that gives each person a role, and that role helps everyone else, and vice versa.

The doctor’s prescription (or, “apparently what they don’t teach you in school”):

1) figure out your N and I. If you need help, let me know, or just ask the people around you. The role you play in their lives will give you some indication. They keep you around for something. You are not allowed to settle with, “I don’t know.” That is not acceptable. Keep on it.

2) if there is a college major that can help get your N and I to become your W, then do it. Go. Do well. Don’t waste your time, and anybody’s money though. Don’t just go there to goof around, or just to make someone else happy (sorry Mom).

3) if there’s someone you can apprentice with, do that in addition (or if you don’t go to college, then instead). Learn directly from someone who does it. This dying art of human interaction is perhaps the greatest loss of the last 100 years.

Above all, don’t take this way of life we have for granted. It was not earned by laziness, and it will perish if laziness is all that it breeds. Be useful. Honor your Maker. Honor your parents.