Transitioning to the Real World

You might have heard recently that NBA rookies Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arthur were recently busted with marijuana and women in their hotel room during the NBA's rookie transition program. The program, instituted by NBA commissioner David Stern (who deserves due credit for being one of the most brilliant men in professional sports), helps players who are breaking in adapt to the NBA around topics such as media relations, drugs, guns, financial stewardship, and groupies. If only Chalmers and Arthur were simultaneously broadcasting their escapades during an interview with ESPN while using their signing bonuses to buy illegal handguns for these groupies with drugs, they'd manage to violate everything they were going to learn at the conference.

The program is a terrific idea because it gives people who are fresh out of college (many who have only attended a year or two) a little perspective and guidance around what is certainly a brand new world. If you take into consideration that many of these rookies didn't grow up with much money or a lot of guidance, it's naive to think these kids will figure it out on the fly. Suddenly a young man is given a lot of money and surrounded by bad temptations, bad influences, and it's a powder keg ready to go off. Frankly, the reality is that its not just NBA rookies that need this training. I'd argue that college graduates of all types and backgrounds have numerous "transitional" blindspots as they enter the working world - it's just that the blindspots vary in number and type.

I'd say, for example, that Christian college graduates, particuarly those who were active in Christian parachurch organizations such as InterVarsity, Campus Crusade, and Navigators, often struggle spiritually adapting to a new discipleship and ministry model where you don't have the benefit of having a prayer partner down the hall in your dorm, or the comfort of the spoon-fed structure of small group and large group, or the ease of needing only to relate to those people who are in your narrow demographic. Community in a church is a different ballgame, one which frankly takes a little more individual initiative and effort. But even for those college graduates who did "church" instead of "parachurch" aren't immune to the jarring new challenges of having a 60-80 hour job and being torn out of a "Christian-only" comfort zone. I can't help but think that the local church has a role to play to ease the transitions for these "fresh out of college" Christians. Hopefully, we can keep such efforts free of marijuana.

But the thing that I found funny about this story is that this whole thing happened Doral Arrowwood resort in Rye Brook, N.Y., where I happen to go every now and then for work reasons, as my company has an adjacent Learning Center and uses the resort hotel. In fact, I'll be there next week. So I might lie in the same bed that Michael Beasley used, or brush my teeth over the same sink that Derrick Rose spat in. I'm still debating whether I should ask the concierge if I can visit the infamous room where the two former Jayhawks made the news. If I smell funny next week, you'll know why.