There was a man who spent many years studying the foremost issues of his time.

One day, one of his teachers turned to him and said, “What are you going to do

with your life?” The man was stunned for he loved this teacher and admired him.

He had never felt such pressure from his teacher before. Stammering, this man

replied, “I don’t know. Finish my studies and get a good job, I suppose.”

“Get a good job,” his teacher repeated. “This is a phrase I have often heard. It is the single worst choice of your generation. Happiness is unlikely to come to the mind whose goal is to ‘get a good job.’”

“Son,” this wise teacher asked, “would you be interested in some specific advice from an old man who wished he had your youth and energy?”

“Of course, Doctor.”

“Look around you. Take a fresh, hard, and uncompromising look at life as you see it. Ask this question, ‘What needs to be done?’ When you have an answer, and it may take some time to get it, then go and do what needs to be done. Do it better than anyone else does it and the world will beat down your door for your help. Then you will not need ‘a good job’; and you will have more than a career. You will have a mission.”

The teacher was noted scientist and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller. The student was J. Zink.