has this happened to you???

donald

back when i was in high school i was in DECA...i won national trophies for public speaking.......upon gradrution...i was offerd a scolarship to a major college....for public speaking.....but the elders conveinced me to go into the pioneer service...i did a dead end job to cover expenses...and it became my permant job when i got married a copule of years later.....with no college...and almost no help to find another job...to rake care of my wife and three kids...i feel i might have thrown my life away....well onr good thing about being on dialsys is ill get an education.donald

Heatmiser

Yep, alot of members on this board missed out on a higher education because of WTBTS policies on getting one (which they are apparently in the process of flip flopping on). Then as the obligations that go along with having a family mount, it gets harder and harder to find the time and money to get one.

Oh, and Welcome donald.

Frog

Hey there Donald, in my opinion it's never too late to get a decent education. I've just returned to University and many of my peers are well into the 40s/50s. A degree isn't always about putting it to use in your career, it can just be about doing it for yourself, you owe it to yourself to give it a try if you can. My dad just turned 50 (jw) and I know that he would benefit greatly from going back to study, I imagine how daunting it must be though when you're a little older.

All the best, and keep posting! froglett

EvilForce

It almost happened to me. The elders did everything they could to get me not to go. They had meeting parts where they'd talk about those thinking of going off to college as being spiritually sick. I was the ONLY one of late high school age. Chastised "young people who run out and buy red sports cars"....guess who had a red Mustang that was bought a few months earlier.....for a whooping $ 5,200? Removed my "priveleges". Counsel me in private for "not waiting on Jehoba". Convinced my parents that helping me financially would be wrong. So my parents gave me $ 0 and refused to sign financial aid paperwork. I had to pay my own way working and going to school. It wasn't easy.

The disgusting part about it was that the elder leading this crusade had a college degree himself. He was a lead engineer for a power company and made $85,000+ back in the mid eighties in the mid-west. His wife of course did not pioneer either and worked full-time. When I pointed this out that he was being hypocritical about wanting me to pioneer when his own wife...or for that matter him, as she made plenty of money to support the whole family, were not pioneering, I was the one being haughty and puffed up with pride.

They would tell me how selfish I was being since this system wouldn't last past me getting a four year degree and I'd spend the last couple of years of the "old system" of things wasting my time with college. Much less all the extra schooling I would need to become a doctor....why they laughed...."A doctor? A doctor? Who's going to need doctors in a few years from now? What a selfish decision".

So I sympathise with you. My hell only last a couple of years before I went off to college. You "did the right thing" and got screwed! My younger brother "did the right thing" and is still suffering as well as he automatically is eliminated from many jobs simply because he doesn't have a four year degree.

Do you think any of those bast**rds ever bothered to apologize to me? NOPE. In fact one had the audacity to come into my clinic for consultation. I told him I wasn't the appropriate doctor for him to see.

Frog

Evilforce I love the veracity in which you write...can always be guaranteed a brutally honest and amusing read when your avatar apears on a thread;-)) froglett

EvilForce

Thank you frog...

I had a friend who was always amazed by these stories. He said.... "Man you ought to write a sit-com based on this crap". (I always thought of these stories more as tragic comedy...if it wasn't sooo true.) He couldn't believe this stuff ACUTUALLY happened. When my other exiled JW friends would come over and tell similar stories he was always in shock at what kind of childhood we had / or more apporpriately....didn't have.

Frog

I have to admit I too was guity of believing my stories were unique and tragic enough to fill a top selling biography!...coming on to the forum certainly humbles you in that regard. Perhaps we could have published a rather candidly written collective account of life as a jw-kid raised in the "troof"...

EvilForce

I'm actually working on a book as we speak. I am trying to be "unique" in my format. I was thinking about having a dozen different people "tell their stories" as this seems to be a unique perspective on the topic of Jdubs and such.

But you are right. For as tragic as I thought any of my experience were.... some of the stories on here just break your heart.

Frog

Excellent work, I'd of course love to browse through it once you've compiled it:-)

JW83

EvilForce, that book sounds like a great idea!

I agree with Frog, it's never too late to go to uni - quite a few of my friends at uni are in their 40s and 50s, and one lady is almost 70 & loving it & getting great marks!

has this happened to you???

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