“To dream by night is to escape your life. To dream by day is to make it happen.”  This quote by Stephen Richards should motivate you to do great things. But how do you translate motivation into action? The job market today is undergoing rapid change.  Can you adapt or innovate under economic distress?  We are all leaders when it comes to the choices that affect our lives.  Most African-Americans don’t have the luxury of a secure financial future. Jay Harold felt all these pressures in the oilfield industry after five years of work. Why was Jay Harold worried? 

The petroleum industry is dependent on the price of a barrel of oil. There’s always a chance of a merger with another company and your job being eliminated. Jay Harold had seen hundreds of people laid off and the price of oil rise and fall. Watching people with advanced chemistry degrees being fired after a merger with a larger oil company was unsettling.

Jay Harold told Black Men in a post to find a solution to your problem.  Don’t find a reason to fail. Here’s what Jay Harold did to solve his work problem. First, find people who want you to succeed and ask them for help. After talking to a cousin who is both a pharmacist and a doctor, Jay Harold began considering his options.

Kansas City has Attractions to visit! The people are warm and friendly.

A Spanish proverb said, “If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.” The logical choice for Jay Harold was to go to pharmacy school. Jay Harold had already met the basic coursework needed for pharmacy school while working on a degree in chemistry. This shortened the time required to finish pharmacy school by two years. Typically it takes five to six years to graduate with a degree in pharmacy. Becoming a doctor wasn’t an achievable medium-term goal because of the time needed to finish medical school.

Living in New Orleans at the time, Jay Harold visited pharmacy schools in Texas and Louisana but was drawn to a school in Missouri. The University of Missouri-Kansas City is a place Jay Harold recommends. The people at UMKC helped a Black Man with a family succeed in the late 1980’s. UMKC’s Pharmacy School professors treated Jay Harold fairly and with respect. There was never any problems with fellow students.  Jay Harold’s experience with the school over the last 25 years has been entirely positive.

Jay Harold never had been to Missouri before stepping on UMKC’s campus in 1987. It didn’t matter because Jay Harold realized what was in front of him. Go to pharmacy school for three years with no summer breaks and get a degree. You can’t do that now, but the point was to find a solution to the oilfield job problem. Here’re some facts about UMKC:

UMKC has a total enrollment in Fiscal Year 2014 of 16,160 students. 12% of students identified as Black/African-American with  3% of students identified as two or more ethnicities. Students come from 50 states and 79 countries. 94% of first-time freshman students received some financial aid (FY 2014).

UMKC offers educational opportunities for young and older students.

2 Pulitzer Prize winners hail from UMKC, and eight current faculty members have won prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships.

1,172 is the total number of full-time and part-time faculty at UMKC.  95% of all educators at UMKC hold doctorates or the highest possible degree in their fields of study. The Student to faculty ratio: 1 faculty member per 13 students. Jay Harold provided this information to you without any commercial ties to UMKC.

Kansas City, Missouri has a population of 470,800 according to the 2014 U.S. Census.  African-Americans comprise 29.9% of the population.  Kansas City has a metro population of over 2 million people. Kansas City is known for Barbeque and Jazz but has many other attractions.

Jay Harold believes in you. You must remember that you can find a positive outcome in most situations by thinking about the future, today. Jay Harold wants you to be more forward thinking.  Books like “Flash Foresight,” by Daniel Burrus provided useful insights into future trends. This quote by John Powell is one to live by. “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

Play the free  “Slow Roll Through Civil Rights” Game found on the Jay Harold website. Enjoyed this post? Share it and read more here.