GOALS ESSAY.
This essay revisits the goals I set for myself in applying to Michigan State University's MAEd program.
I reflect on how things have changed yet my goals remain the same.
"SOME THINGS [SHOULD] NEVER CHANGE"
Jake Manning
Spring 2015
Do you know that feeling when you dust off an old shoebox and find a personal artifact or old photo you completely forgot about? You glance at the photo or ticket stub and within seconds your mind is flooded with memories, smells, and emotions. It transports you briefly to a different time and place in your life.
Well, this usually happens for me with much older photos or artifacts than something I wrote only a couple years ago, but I experienced a similar flooding of memories from summer 2013 as I revisited my admission essay to Michigan State University’s MAEd program.
My wife and I had recently been accepted into graduate programs at the same institution on the East Coast. Within a matter of a long weekend trip to campus we realized God wanted different things for us – not better, not worse, just different. The summer of 2013 was a turbulent one, and the many transitions and changes we endured and made together were extremely difficult but incredibly formative in our early marriage.
Now, here we are today, the spring of 2015, and my wife and I both are finishing our Master’s programs, have bought a house in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and here is the curve ball, we are expecting our first child in late May.
The point is so much has changed since applying and completing my graduate work. My goals upon entering Michigan State University were “to bolster what has been a promising, rapidly developing administrative career in public education, as well as prepare for my career in college coaching.”
I went on to share:
“Without a doubt the most formative time of my life was my ‘adult’ years of education. High school and college is the frontier of one’s life. It is the time to venture out into the forest, into the untamed and grow oneself. I want nothing more than to come alongside young people as they brave this rugged frontier.
This frontier of the secondary and college experience is impartial and raw. Some flourish in it. Some do not. I want to support all students that have the bravery to step out into the wild. For it was the same initial uncertain step that helped form me in to the man I am.”
Things surely have changed quite frequently in my early career, my first two plus years of marriage, and my own adulthood, however, my goal of “[supporting] all students” certainly has not.
We were created for helping others.
We were created with skills and deficits, gifts and shortcomings. Whether it has been as an assistant college football coach, a Young Life backpacking guide, a high school administrator, a friend, or a husband, I am most alive when my goal is something bigger than myself.
It is a humbling thing to read my own words – my goals – from only two years ago, and to be reminded of how quickly God’s plan can change for my wife and me.
It is, however, just as encouraging to be reminded no matter what life may look like, my purpose – my goal – never changes.
I am grateful for the instrumental graduate experience I have been afforded through my time at Michigan State University, and I am even more grateful for a career and a calling for which to put it to great use.