Jan. 31: "Career Day and the Mosque''

I am going to miss both of my classes Tuesday.

Now, if I had said that 30 years ago, I doubt it would have raised any eyebrows among the people to whom I would have made that confession. (My folks would not have been in that number, for obvious reasons).

The motivation behind my decision to miss class Tuesday is much different than it was three decades ago, too. In that earlier time, it would probably have involved something alcohol or co-ed related.

Until now, my attendance record has been pristine this time around. But I will lose the Gold Star for Attendance on Tuesday so that I can attend the Career Day event at the MSU Coliseum.

Career Day is held once each semester and provides corporate recruiters a chance to meet prospective employees who will be soon be graduating and looking for work.

Actually, Career Day is a two-day event, with one day (Wednesday) devoted to technical fields such as engineering, which is one of Mississippi State’s strongest fields.

Tuesday, by contrast, is the day where students from non-technical fields can meet with possible employers.

There will be about 100 employers at the Coliseum on Tuesday and I plan to press the flesh with every single one of them.

When I first arrived on campus, I planned to teach. That may be an option yet. But here lately, I’m beginning to broaden my horizons a bit.

While it is true that I’ve spent a career as a newspaper journalist, I do believe that some of the talents and skills I have honed can be of value in other fields, too.

So I plan to nose around the Coliseum and see how many of those employers I can charm silly. My suit is ready. My white dress shirt is starched stiff. My dress shoes have a new shine and I’ve got a folder full of updated resumes.

In order to attend the Career Day, I had to arrange to take my regularly-scheduled Public Speaking test at 6 p.m. So it will be a long and, I hope, productive day.

On Monday, I had a test in Geography and Mass Media Law and feel pretty good about my effort in both. I have the aforementioned test on Tuesday, followed by a semi-major project for Journalism Ethics due on Wednesday.

Monday night, I went to a prayer service at the local Mosque as part of an Extra Credit assignment for our Geography class. The fact that Starkville has a mosque would be surprising were it not for the fact that half of the Middle-East seems to be enrolled in the various engineering programs at MSU.

I had had some exposure to Islam, mainly through some freelance work I did for a ministry whose sole purpose is to win Muslims to Christianity by living and working in predominantly Muslim countries. So I was not surprised by what I encountered. Muslims are generally kind, gracious, intelligent people.

There were probably about 60 Geography students at the prayer service. All the girls wore scarves in keeping with Islamic requirements. I looked to see if any of the girls were wearing the same scarf and wondered if they would be embarrassed to see another girl in the same one. But I didn’t see any duplicates.

After the prayers, we were escorted into the basement of the Islamic Center and be-headed for being infidels.

Just kidding.

They had a power-point presentation where they explained what Muslims believe and don’t believe. The MSU professor who led the presentation stressed in her introduction that they were not trying to convert us Geography students, but during the Q&A session that followed, it seemed to me that some of the Geography students were very much trying to convert our hosts.

Bless their hearts. Their motives were good, but it’s a silly notion to think that somehow these folks were less sincere and less devoted to their religion than the good Christian geography students.

There is a time and place for such meaningful dialogue, of course. Monday at the Islamic Center in Starkville was most definitely not one of those times.

It ended amicably, though. Our hosts were gracious. They gave us cookies.

Muslims believe in cookies!

Did you know that?