Experience Training Through Maranatha
It seems like more and more people are encouraging travel and experience as part of education. We’ve discussed the benefits and dangers of doing this travel in the format of what is called a gap year, but what about during school?
If you read the gap year article, I hope you realized that the travel and experience itself is not necessarily dangerous. The danger of a gap year is in getting sidetracked from school or stuck at home.
What do I mean by travel and experience? Travel can be one of the best ways to broaden your horizons when it comes to culture. Often, seeing more of the world makes your place in the world more realistic. Experience involves the places you see, the people you meet, and the things you do.
Travel and experience round out a student’s education outside of the classroom. If I’ve said it once on our blog I’ve said it a million times. Opportunities and how you take advantage of them is what can set your education apart from others.
“Opportunities and how you take advantage of them is what can set your education apart from others.”
When I was in high school I was fascinated by the idea of traveling. In my family, we didn’t do much traveling outside of our state. I think I can count on one hand the times we did. We didn’t have the resources to do so. What I was able to do was take advantage of some opportunities through my school with the encouragement of my parents, coaches, and teachers.
Through soccer, Bible quizzing team, fine arts competitions, and choirs I was able to travel and get out of the normal routine several times a school year. If my school offered it, I most-likely was in it. That doesn’t mean I was the best at everything I was involved in (quite the opposite in several of the things I was in) but I wanted to be involved in everything I could.
In college, the same thing happened. I traveled quite a bit during my undergraduate years. Now, one of the biggest parts of my job is traveling.
“If my school offered it, I most-likely was in it.”
I can remember going to college and talking to other students who were shocked at all I got to do in high school. I also remember talking to students where I was shocked at what they got to do. It always interested me in who were the really involved students in high school and who was not. Often, the more involved the student the better prepared they were for college.
Now before we take this too far and say that being involved equals a more qualified person, let me insert here that it’s not just being involved but how you’re involved. Quality and quantity are both important when it comes to learning through experience.
For every student who successfully learns through an experience, there is usually another student who had the same experience opportunity who did not successfully learn. Travel and being involved in opportunities is no different than the rest of your education. Just because you’re there doesn’t mean that you are learning.
What does this mean for you?
It is important that you look at the opportunities you have and what opportunities you are or are not taking advantage of. It has been said that “opportunities are never really lost, they are just taken by others.” Make sure you are taking advantage of opportunities that are in front of you. You’ll be surprised where they might take you.
How Can MBU Help?
The mission of Maranatha is to develop leaders for ministry in the local church and the world “To the Praise of His Glory.” Right away you should notice the global nature of the training that MBU seeks to provide.
Maranatha provides many opportunities to students. These opportunities come in a variety of ways, but the ultimate goal of all of these experiences is to develop leaders. See, at MBU, we don’t just want you to travel to “find yourself during your college years.” We seek to put our students in opportunities that will train them to be better leaders for God’s glory.
We are going to be talking about opportunities ranging from traveling in an MBU quartet to traveling to another country to teach English. We are going to highlight individual groups, opportunities, and experiences at MBU.
Does this sound interesting? Think you know something we should write about? Email me at Matthew.Sheeley@mbu.edu and we’ll talk about it!