This inspired Bliss so that he read many exploration books, including Henry Morton Stanley's story of Daniel Livingstone in Africa. Bliss attended Yale University for his undergraduate education. While in school, he studied under famed professors such as Noah Porter, Edward Salisbury Dana and William Graham Sumner. Bliss took a variety of courses ranging from Latin and Greek to physics and chemistry. He was involved in the Pundits, a Yale literary society, and also enjoyed attending baseball and football games as often as he could. Bliss graduated from Yale in 1887 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin and Greek. After giving up his hopes of preaching, Bliss set his sights on becoming a teacher. After graduating from Yale he took a position as principal, sole teacher and janitor at the high school in Granby, Massachusetts. While teaching at Granby, Bliss discovered that teaching, like preaching, was not his passion. He then remembered the adventure stories he read when he was younger and concluded that he wanted to work abroad as a missionary. He said, "As soon as it was settled in my mind to become a missionary, I asked myself in what way I could best serve. The answer I thought was to become a doctor." Before Bliss could attend medical school, however, he wanted to repay a debt he had to his father. He took a new teaching position in Chicago at the Harvard School for Boys, where he stayed for one year. After completing a year of teaching work at the Harvard School for Boys, Bliss returned to Yale and began medical school. While there he worked as an assistant to Dr. Herbert Smith, studying water quality in New Haven. Bliss completed the three-year course of study in two years and graduated second in his class in June 1891. On April 23, 1891, Bliss wrote to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, applying to be a medical missionary. Bliss requested commission to China reportedly because he believed in "the probability that, at no distant day, it will occupy the position of supreme influence among nations of the East." He received a post as the physician for the mission in Shaowu, China. Bliss departed from San Francisco aboard the SS "China" on September 27, 1892. On February 8, 1893, four months after departing the United States, Bliss reached Shaowu. When Bliss arrived he immediately began studying the native dialect under the instruction of a teacher named Shi Xiansheng. Because many of the Chinese still utilized traditional medical practices, he did not have very many patients at first and he often studied the language for six and a half hours a day.