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My Fear of Europe
First words: 22 Aug 2010 - Matt Schnakenberg

When I was nineteen I had the opportunity to travel to Europe for the summer with a group of about fifteen other young writers to participate in a kind of extended writing and traveling workshop. It would be a special class through Michigan State University put together by my lower division writing teacher, Linda. She was an excellent teacher, a poet and cultural theorist. She handpicked the group of us, her favorite students from her writing classes from the previous few years. At the first organizational meeting at Linda's house, I got to meet the other students. They were intelligent, funny, moody, engaging, and curious. Excellent traveling and writing companions. The plan was to base ourselves in London and from there travel all over by train, returning to share our writings about what we had seen and done. Essentially, we were seeking inspiration and seeking to inspire each other.

I didn't go. But I don't exactly regret it, either. Not really. It felt good to stay home and work hard to earn money to pay for the next school year. I'm proud of my sense of responsibility. Still, almost twenty years later, I haven't traveled to Europe, or outside the continental United States, for that matter. God willing, I have a lot of years left, but I have begun to fear that I will not go to Europe before I die. At the same time, contradicting, I fear going to Europe. Not for the usual reasons, like being kidnapped by terrorists or forgetting the word for "bathroom" at a crucial moment, but because I'm afraid to spend the money, afraid of being seen as irresponsible, even afraid of betraying my working class background. Maybe not initially, but in much of the time since my reasons for not going to Europe have become as much about my attitudes about money as they are about the actual monetary cost. When I didn't have the money to go on the college trip to Europe, my teacher Linda encouraged me to borrow from my parents, but I knew they didn't have money, either. And they said so when I asked anyway. They had enough to help me to go to college. I earned as much as I could during the summers, and often worked during the school year, too. (I also had a grant and a scholarship, which helped a lot.) Going to Europe would not only cost a lot of money, but it would prevent me from working and earning the additional money I needed to go to school. As I said, I didn't regret the choice. It reinforced my sense of responsibility, and it made the education I could afford that much more important to me.

On my mom's side of the family I am the first generation to complete college. Growing up in Appalachian Kentucky, my mom's generation was the first to complete high school. A year after not going on the Europe trip, my parents withdrew their financial support for my college. They did so, they said, so that I would have greater pride in my education through my ownership of it. They were right. I had to work a bit harder and take out some loans, but I am that much prouder of my accomplishments. And I like to work hard, taking too many notes in class, reading too many articles, staying up all night writing papers. One summer between terms I had three different jobs, sixty hours a week with no overtime. Sometimes I'd have bad dreams where I would show up at the wrong job at the wrong time wearing the wrong uniform.

My dad liked to ask me, "But are you having fun?" Sometimes the question would really throw me. I'd just been telling him how busy I was, how I was struggling to get everything done and make ends meet, but then I'd have to stop and think, "Yeah, I like what I'm doing-I really am happy." It's not like my dad was all about taking life easy. There were times he was working eighteen hours a day as a tool maker, and he knew there were bad days (and weeks and months, for that matter) and things you had to do that really weren't fun. What the question really meant underneath was "do you know why you are doing what you are doing?" Make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. As a toolmaker, he could have made twice as much money working in the Detroit area, but instead he and Mom decided to live in Northern Michigan near the lake with beautiful forests and hills. That's what "fun" meant. Working hard, saving their money, but spending it on the right things.

Sounds like a good definition of financial stewardship to me. Financial stewardship doesn't mean just not buying frivolous things. It means buying the right things for the right reasons. In their own way, all of my years of school were a bit "frivolous." It's not like I got a solid engineering or business degree. I'll never make that much as a rhetoric professor, and for all the work I still racked up a lot of college loans. Even my parents balked when I announced that I wasn't stopping with an MA but starting directly on a PhD. Still, they accepted readily enough when they saw that it made me happy. And I do some good as a teacher.

Will I make it to Europe before I die? I hope so, but I don't have to. The trip to Europe in college would have been fun, and the students that went spent their money in a good way. I would never fault the work of writing and inspiring. It's just that I didn't have that money, right then. Sometimes financial stewardship means passing on some very attractive opportunities, because God seems to have another plan. The challenge is to discern what opportunities are worth grabbing and what sacrifices truly do need to be made. I shouldn't worry about never going to Europe, but I also need to recognize that those nearly twenty years have passed very quickly. Nineteen years old doesn't seem that long ago.