Recently, I found out that my 20 year old cousin had decided that she found the love of her life and wanted to get married. While marriage is a wonderful thing, I worry about so many young people who feel that it is okay to decide who they want to spend the rest of their lives with at such a young age. Think about it, what if you could decide what job you would have for the rest of your life at the age of 20? What if you could decide what type of clothes or hairstyle you would have at 20? What about what kind of car you drove or neighborhood you lived in? The reason why these questions sound absurd is because we all know as we get older and experience different things, our tastes and attitudes change. Also, as we get older and acquire more wealth, our ability to afford more expensive and higher quality items tend to change as well. So, while the 2005 Toyota Camry may have been nice in 2008, it just doesn't cut the mustard in 2014. For this reason, I think that all individuals should utilize the milestone of achieving a master degree before marriage (if they plan to get one) or at least the equivalent time it would take someone to do so (probably around the age of 30 or so) before getting married. I have several simple reasons for this.
TIME TO FOCUS ON ONE'S CAREER
When one first begins a career, it can be very challenging to try to balance the time needed to dedicate to learning to hone one's craft and the time needed to keep a marriage healthy and raise a family. When most people start out with a new company, they are at the bottom of the totem pole. There is so much to learn that one's colleagues already know, that often the first 1-3 years of someone's career can be an intense game of catch-up with long hours and late nights to acquire the necessary knowledge to be successful at one's job and gain the respect of one's peers from a credibility and effectiveness standpoint. If someone is married during this time in his/her life, they will feel reluctant to stay at the office for yet another late night or to put in a lot of hours on the weekend to prepare for a big project that upcoming week. By remaining single, the dedication and focus one can put on his/her career cannot even be compared to the person who is always worrying about having to make her/his spouse happy. On the flip side, if you are married to someone who says that he or she is good with you working such long hours and not spending that much time with them because they understand you are working for the future, that is fantastic, but isn't that being a little selfish to that person? While you are building a career and creating the life you desire, that person is relegated to "passing" through life by waiting for the free time you can spend with him/her. I feel it would be much better to allow that person to be free to live the life they desire and not holding that person hostage to your success. While it may be a tough decision, they will thank you for it in the long run.
TIME TO MATURE EMOTIONALLY AND PHILOSOPHICALLY
When you are young, you don't know what you don't know. When you give yourself time to just live life and experience a number of different lessons, you'll be amazed at how ridiculous some of your previous views were. I only use the Master's degree as a good barometer because with higher education comes a deeper understanding of various truths in our world and how things work. As with your undergrad degree, you are exposed to a number of different philosophies and opinions about life that have a tendency to change the way you think and your opinion and focus on things. The same is true of the higher level degree in which this intellectual stimulation is heightened based on the deeper level understanding of various subjects that you pursue. Also, time gives us the ability to create a large data set from which to pull to make better decisions about our interactions with others, who we are as people, and what is the best course of action as it relates to us individually. I would argue from the age of 18-30, you are still very much trying to figure out what life is all about. You have theories. You have ideas. You have lessons that other people shared with you when you were younger that you are testing, but you don't really know. By giving yourself time to grow, have experiences, and learn from them, you will have a much better sense of who you are and what is the type of right person for you. The journey to obtain your masters degree will help with that exploration and discovery greatly.
PRE-MASTERS VERSUS POST-MASTERS TYPE OF PEOPLE
As with anything in life, once you achieve different milestones and accomplishments, the circle of those with whom you interact will change. The reason I give the advice to wait on marriage until after your Masters is because the individuals with whom you will have a chance to interact with should change somewhat as you begin to become a part of different circles as you grow in your career. When one allows himself/herself to stay open to meeting new people who may share some of their evolved views and interest over time, it decreases the chances of marrying someone who one generally liked and cared for at the age of 26, but who is not the person that he/she sees the more-maturely educated and enlightened self with at age 34. While it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with this person and that you two still couldn't be the best of friends, the thought of spending the rest of one's life with someone from whom they are so drastically different can be terrifying. By putting this standard in place (attaining one's Master's), one ensures herself/himself that they are keeping all of their options open for when they may meet that special man or woman who is absolutely perfect for their 34-year-old, more thoroughly-educated self, who surprisingly wouldn't have been for their 26-year-old, still-learning self.
A Master Degree. While I will agree it's not for everyone, just as a undergrad degree isn't for everyone, for those whose careers can be greatly enhanced with the attainment of this degree (which I would argue is about 98% of them), your focus should be on obtaining this before any thoughts of marriage begin to cross your mind. Undergrads are like high school diplomas these days, and you need the extra credentials to set yourself apart from the masses to obtain that competitive advantage. And while you may think that you've already met the person of your dreams and you don't want to lose him/her because you are trying to obtain this degree first, the truth of the matter is, if they don't decide to stay with you because of your focus on this for your career, they probably weren't the right person for you in the first place.
Ken Middleton is an Account Manager at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech. You can follow his daily quotes of inspiration and motivation on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIN
