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| Image via Wikipedia https://goo.gl/KLW5oi |
"What do you plan to do after you graduate?"
A seemingly harmless question. My answer for that question has been changing and evolving as I've progressed through college. My answer this time was something like -
"I'd like to find a job doing multimedia work, or possibly PR, but I'm not sure I'm using the next year to figure things out."
That was my safe, basic answer. But after hearing it my boss talked about his own personal experience finding a job in his field after he graduated (he graduated a psych major from IU who eventually started a business making soap). He then went on to revise his question, and I don't remember the exact wording, but there was one key word that was swapped out -
"What do you want to do after you graduate?"
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I'm not entirely sure when I started becoming so interested in the state of Alaska, but it was within the last year. Alaska has a population of 736,000, which is actually more than Wyoming and Vermont, but the population is very spread out. On average there are only 1.2 people per square mile, which actually makes it one of the most sparsely populated places on Earth. This is helped by the fact that Alaska is huge. It clocks in at 665,384 square miles, larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined. If it were its own nation, it would be the 18th largest in the world (right behind good ol' Libya).
But most importantly, as far as what I've seen in pictures and heard through testimony, Alaska is absolutely beautiful.
Denali National Park
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| Image via Michael DeYoung, Travel Alaska.com https://www.travelalaska.com/ |
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| Image via Michael DeYoung, Travel Alaska.com https://www.travelalaska.com/ |
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| Image via http://www.alaskanorthernlightscruises.com/alaskan-northern-lights/ |
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| Image via Flickr https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8482/8212311983_3a9d591af6_b.jpg |
That's the real answer to "what do I want to do after I graduate." I want to take a risk. I want to go out, get lost, and find out about myself. I don't want to do something boring, I don't want to do something comfortable. I want to do something crazy. I want to experience God like I never have before. This is my chance. It doesn't necessarily have to be immediately after I graduate, and it doesn't necessarily have to be Alaska. It could be Montana, Maine, Washington State, Oregon, or even China. I'm not just throwing these places out, these are places I have thought seriously about living in. I want to travel. I want to trust God and just go for it.
I can look forward and see a life where I stay in Indiana, find a job working in Indy or Bloomington, get involved in a local church, settle down, raise a family. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. That actually sounds like a pretty great life, and still could be Gods plan, who knows. But what if I didn't plan to do that.
I love Indiana, and I wouldn't want to have grown up anywhere else. But I think growing up in Indiana is part of what has sparked this curiosity in me. Jon McLaughlin, an artist from Anderson, wrote a song called "Indiana." The opening lines go
I'm glad I never lived next to the water
So I could never get used to the beach
I'm glad I never grew up on a mountain
To figure out how high the world could reach
I hinted at this a little bit already, but this fascination I have with Alaska goes so much deeper than seeing cool places and experiencing new things. It's really all about experiencing God. I want learn about him, to see His name in every star and in every mountain, to quietly breath it as I step into something entirely unknown. And then, I want to tell the world about it, to write to take pictures, to proclaim God's name. To do that as a job, to have someone pay me to go out and do that - that would be the dream.
Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell you what he has done for my soul. - Psalm 66:16
So what will happen after I graduate? I can't say for sure. Actually, I have no idea. But I'm trusting the Lord. Should be fun.
(Alaska facts taken from Wikipedia, if you were wondering)
