Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Winter 2014 | Page 43
PuBlISHED alumni
Learning to Become
How does this alumnus
measure the return on investment
of his education?
by Brandon J. O’Brien M.A. ’07
economics, between religious histories and
my experience among rural mill workers.
In other words, my education was
helping me see how things were
connected. It was helping me make sense
of my experience.
In his essay “The Art of Fiction,”
novelist Henry James admonishes novice
t least once a week for the six months
writers, “Try to be one of the people on
I worked with him at the lumber mill,
whom nothing is lost.” It seems to me
Vernon slapped me on the back and said,
that education is a success if it produces
“This is the sort of job that makes you wish this sort of people, whatever they should
you’d gone to college, huh?” Then he’d
end up doing for a living. The young man
laugh and laugh.
who studies philosophy and later decides
I had been to college, which was
to stay home with the kids so his wife
why Vernon thought this was funny.
can pursue her career; the young woman
Grading lumber was not my first job after
who majors in piano performance and
graduation but, at $7.50 an hour, it was the later runs a small business; the students
best paying so far. In any case, Vernon had who never do anything related to their
degree are nevertheless worlds richer if
hands the width and girth of a catcher’s
their education makes them one of the
mitt and forearms like small hams. That’s
people on whom nothing is lost. This
why I laughed at his joke, too, every time
is especially true if the education is
he told it.
Christian and therefore helps students see
After graduation—and for several years
all things through the lens of Scripture.
after that—I had no clear idea what I
Colleges are under a great deal of
wanted to do with my education. It was
certainly clear to me what I didn’t want
pressure these days to justify what they
to do. Grading lumber, for example, was
have to offer. It’s important to parents and
not on my short list of career possibilities.
students who will have to bear education
But I always knew what kind of person
debt that they can explain what they
I wanted to be. College studies left me
will do with their education. I wonder
unsatisfied with simple answers to complex how many are asking what sort of people
they will become in the course of their
questions and convinced that the more I
knew about nearly anything, the better I’d education.
The return on investment of my
be at whatever job I ultimately settled in.
education, at this point in my career, is
Graduate studies at Wheaton helped me
begin to see the connections between issues not that I make more money as a college
graduate or Ph.D. than I would otherwise.
I’d never considered related—between
The return is that I’m becoming the
theology and national foreign policy,
person I always wanted to be.
between biblical exegesis and domestic
a
Brandon J. O’Brien M.A. ’07
and his wife, Amy Packer
O’Brien M.A. ’09, live in
Conway, Arkansas, with
their son. Brandon recently
completed his Ph.D. in
historical theology at Trinity
Evangelical Divinity School.
He is the author of two books,
most recently Misreading
Scripture with Western Eyes
(InterVarsity Press 2012),
which he coauthored with
E. Randolph Richards.
Brandon “does” a good many
things: writes and edits,
teaches Bible and theol ogy
part-time, and trains pastors
and educators.
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