Raising Doctors on a Patient's Salary

One very important aspect of human input is the concept of Faith; I don’t necessarily mean the idea of toting a pulpit-sized Bible around the neighborhood and preaching about Jesus; I mean the centered belief that God has given us all things necessary to bring all of our hopes and desires to fruition.

     It took a great deal of faith for Jesse firstly, to contemplate the idea of a higher education especially in light of a number of irrevocable factors: (1) his family history as it relates to education; (2) his economic status (uh, son? Do you know how much money it costs to go to medical school?); and (3) the fact that he was a black male living in a major metroplex. It took great faith, number one, in God in that he believed that somehow God would make a way for him to realize his dreams and number two, Jesse had to have faith in himself to even sincerely and verbally declare such a desire, and even more faith than that to believe that he was surrounded by the nuclear family that he believed would help his dream of becoming a doctor come true. 

     The fact that Jesse had exercised his faith forced me to exercise mine. I knew how much a four-year undergrad degree would cost, and here was my son telling me that he wanted not just a graduate degree, but a professional degree, the cost of an undergraduate degree notwithstanding. There were times when I was making $40.00 a night playing in local blues bars, and on the way home I would drive past Brophy College Prep and I would declare out loud, “my son is going to graduate from this school one day!” Well, Jesse Jr. was in the eighth grade and I had to either find a job paying more than $40.00 a night, or hit the lottery! I didn’t know how God was going to do it and at that point, I didn’t care how he would do it, I just believed that He would. After all, I believed that God had placed this humungous burden to study on Jesse’s heart, and it was up to Him to pay for it. My only job was to “build” the student.