About Me

I’m a Mississippi girl married to a Canadian boy. We compromise and live in Virginia. I spend my days raising four kids, homeschooling, seeking God, and pursuing my writing dream. Occasionally I take naps, too.

One thought on “About Me”

Hello, I’m visiting the author Sara Roberts Jones at her website, sararobertsjones.com. 🙂 Just finished The Fellowship. I wanted to take a nap after a camping trip this weekend, but I also wanted to read (guess you can tell which one won out). Even after a few chapters and feeling pretty sleepy, I kept reading–I had to find some resolution to all that! You had me. I bought into the story and the characters to the point that I felt uneasy and slightly queasy mid-way through because I could tell things were going to get worse before they got better. My library sure did a smart thing by ordering this book.

On a (slightly) different note, I understand how young people told that they CAN’T attend college and having that option for their future totally removed from them would want to explore the option of going to college, and how women might see a need for college so that they have a way to support their families should their husbands pass away (or leave). In my experience and observation, though, college is not necessarily an avenue for job training or even job preparation. I write this as a summa cum laude graduate of the Honors College at USM, with a degree in Environmental Biology and a minor in Chemistry. All those A’s, all that studying, all those classes and labs, and all it really prepared me for was–wait for it–more school. I had no desire to go to grad school and wanted to be a missionary at that point, anyway. At Awards Day at the end of my senior year, my father asked (with slight disappointment), “you’ve never wanted to go to med school, have you?” Nope, never had. Got accepted to grad school but declined it because I went to Romania to serve for a year.

Many people I know graduated with degrees that, while perhaps fulfilling on personal levels, didn’t necessarily prepare them for a job. I had a delightful professor who once quoted somebody else (no idea who now) in one of our classes…”College is the babysitter for tomorrow’s workforce.” I took offense at the time, but I kind of get it now. College DID give me opportunities to grow personally and spiritually and to grow up. To discover more about myself, to learn more about how to think critically and to engage in the world. But it wasn’t particularly fun, and although I met great people, I don’t have lifelong close friends from college (and I had counted on that). It was honestly often lonely and lots of hard, hard work. So it provided opportunities for personal challenge and development. But what college did NOT give me was what I expected going in–training, credentials, and an open door to a career of helping protect God’s green earth in some way. God used college in my life, certainly; but I don’t think of my degree as something to fall back on. And I’m not alone in that. I suppose I’m just bringing this up because I sensed several times that there was a thought in the story of college giving women (and men, too) abilities to provide for and support their families that they couldn’t get without a degree. Certainly some degrees are necessary for certain jobs–social work, teaching school, physical therapy. But most degrees don’t carry with them an accompanying certification. Because I’ve been to college, I think “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” But if I hadn’t been to college, I’d probably think “I wonder what I missed.” Anyway, perhaps it’s not germane to the conversation of the book but just a thought I had. 🙂 I’m still thankful I went to college, though. By faith even if not by feeling sometimes. Thanks for writing–this book was engrossing.

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