The summer after my junior year of high school, I went to YoungLife camp at a place called Rockbridge, in Virginia. At camp, I met Jesus in a real way, and it changed my life forever. Throughout my senior year of high school, I went through the typical wrapping up process: ACTs, sending out transcripts, applying for scholarships, graduating, etc. When it all came to a close, I had a full-ride to WVU, a lot of scholarship money, and a plan to major in Chemical Engineering. However, after one semester it was pretty apparent that I was no good at math and had no desire to study engineering. At this point, I was going through training to be a YoungLife leader and was really loving it. So after the first semester, I switched to a business management major and stuck with that for the next two years. Overall, I liked that more than the first major, but deep down I knew that I didn’t want to be a businessman. During those two years, I started leading YoungLife at Grafton High School, and it hit me. All I wanted to do was to invest in the lives of teenagers and tell them about the Gospel. And I knew YoungLife was a great umbrella to do that under, so I decided I wanted to work through YoungLife.
There was only a couple of holes that popped up in my plan. 1.) YoungLife requires you to have a 4 year degree to go on staff, but I didn’t want to finish my business degree. 2.) I wanted to go back to southern West Virginia (where I’m from), and there wouldn’t be enough money to hire a staff person at the time. Therefore, full-time staff wasn’t really an option, however, my leader from back home gave me an idea that really made itself at home in my heart; teacher staff! I could get a teaching degree, do YoungLife wherever I get hired, be trained as a staff person, but my paycheck would come through the school system instead of from YoungLife! The logical next step in the process was to figure out the feasibility of getting a teaching degree. After a quick trip to the education department here at WVU, I knew that it wasn’t the type of degree you could just jump into; it would take a lot of extra school time to get that degree. However, I wouldn’t be discouraged. I looked into a number of different degrees, and ways to obtain them, and found out that in West Virginia one could get a two-year master’s degree in secondary education with any bachelor’s degree. So I looked into what degree I could get the quickest, and came away with MDS! I already had a minor in Business Administration, so I would need to get two more. I chose English, so I could start working on my prerequisites for an English teaching certification, and Communications, because it’s supposed to be easy. With summer classes, I’ll graduate next December with a degree in MDS, then start my master’s degree right after that.
Like I stated earlier, my three minors are Business Administration, English, and Communications. I’ll start with the minor I already have completed, Business Administration. I got this minor by getting a lot of my former business classes transferred over to cover the minor requirements. I think the business minor is just an overall sweet minor to have, because it gives you such a great overview of skills for the workforce. I’ve learned a very complete understanding of the ins and outs of the business world. An example that I could see this minor being useful for in my life is if I’d become an area director for YoungLife in a few years. In this circumstance, I would have to manage the area’s budget, fundraise, hold area meetings, and things of the sort. Because of the skills gained in accounting, finance, and management I would be able to handle thses responsibilities much more smoothly.
The second of my minors is in English. The main reason for taking the English minor was to get future class-work already out of the way. However, there are a lot of advantages to having a good handle on English and literature. While taking English classes, I have to read a