After four tries, it was good to finally complete my master’s degree. The first three tries had not been failures, exactly, but each time something had come up to bring the effort to a halt.

My first try was immediately after college; I enrolled in the Master of Divinity program at Fuller Seminary. This was a three-year program (for full-time students). I was four years into it when I accepted a call to spend a year as a substitute faculty member at George Fox. I took a couple of classes at Western Evangelical Seminary while living in Newberg, and at least one other in Fuller’s extension program in the S.F. Bay area the next year, when we were at Walnut Creek. I think I had finished at least 80% of the program when I gave it up, at the end of my career as a pastor.

In the mid-1980s when I was working at Whittier College I enrolled in their brand-new MBA program. I took 3 or 4 classes, did well, but decided that it was a waste of my time. I didn’t like the classes. Looking back, it was pretty stupid to drop it – I might have had an easier time getting employed later on if I’d had an MBA. But I’m really not an MBA type of person!

When I was at JPL in the late 1980s I was advised to get a technical degree; it was pretty hard to move up in NASA with just a BA in Religion. JPL offered to pay 100% of the tuition for a master’s in computer science at USC, so I decided to take them up on it–only to find that I wasn’t even qualified to enter the program! So I took some classes at Cal State LA to gain admission. A year later, I enrolled at USC. I think I completed four graduate courses in computer science before I accepted (another!) call to a position at George Fox. One of those courses was an important foundation for my later work as a web developer.

After arriving at George Fox, I gave up on the idea of getting a master’s degree. But after a few years they offered an M.A. in Christian Studies, and agreed to transfer some of my credit from Fuller, so I enrolled. The M.A. in C.S. was really intended as the “Christian” component to the Psy.D., so most of my fellow students were psychology people. But I enjoyed my studies, and got to write a master’s thesis: “How to Be A Quaker in the 21st Century.” It was not really a thesis; I wrote it as a curriculum for a course to be taught in Friends churches.

One of the reasons I decided to go for the M.A. was so I could teach in GF’s degree completion program. They hired me, and I taught one class. It went so poorly that I was not invited back.

So my M.A. never helped my career. A graduate degree in Christian Studies didn’t have much impact on hiring decisions for IT positions. It wasn’t until after I retired, and our church started an undergraduate degree program for people going into ministry, that anyone was interested. I was asked if I’d like to be on the faculty, and what degrees did I have? My M.A. in C.S. gave me the opportunity to teach, and I really enjoyed it.