Up on my Soap Box

Okay, so I write this blog for myself, but I just feel so strongly about several things lately that I just want them recorded. It's not to persuade others, but to just articulate my thoughts and splash my feelings onto a permanent medium.

Here's the first of many...but who knows if I'll ever get around to posting my other critical thinkings. A glimpse into my cognitive ramblings:

This fall, when I returned to my beloved BYU bubble I strutted campus with the elated idea that I was going realize my full potential, fix all my mistakes I made in the naivete of Freshman year, and hit the ground running. I was sick of all the grade-grubbers, the crazy curve obsessors, and the in-class Facebookers and Angry Bird-flingers. I was sick of seeing lazy corner-cutters coming to lecture only to waste away their subsidized tuition for a disrupting chat with their neighbor--it's not Dating 101, it's Music 101, gah! I don't think people realize that even the 72 year old widow in South America is diligently paying her tithing, a part of which supports their education, for them to "Enter to Learn and Go Forth to Serve", not "Enter to Disrupt and Go Forth to Waste Others' Offerings". There were and are SO many people who sacrifice SO much for us to be at Brigham Young University; people who know the meaning of sacrifice for a good cause: truth.

[deep breath] So, my goal: seek learning and truth; seek to love to learn; seek to become closer to God by gaining truths, or intelligence, because God is intelligence and we come closer to Him as we seek to learn truth. I sensed that I had missed the boat on this idea for many years of my education, and in consequence, I have been waiting for years on the dock, longing for a higher motivation for my education. I've always known education was important, for reasons like preparation and being able to use your knowledge and skills to build up the kingdom, but I never realized the true motivation for seeking truth. At BYU I have felt the Spirit speak to me truths in Family Finance, Biology, Psychology, Human Development, and yes, even in my Self-Defense class. Intelligence is God, and as we seek truth and intelligence we seek God--and that should be our true motivation.

I'll take one foot off my soap box now, but only one because I just cannot be done quite yet. Yesterday my Music Civilization professor (Dr. Howard) catapulted this exact idea of a higher knowledge into our faces and I just gritted my teeth and tried to soak in every ounce of what he was really saying. It was a profound message. And it all started with talking about metaphysical poetry and the poet John Donne. We watched a few excerpts from the exceptionally moving movie, "Wit". Here is the excerpt that cranked the cogs of our class discussion:

It is a beautiful thought: to separate death and eternal life by "just a comma"; to actually learn something from the poetry, even down to the punctuation. But the profound thought by my professor really made me re-think my motives in life. He said in his brilliant British accent,

 "This class is just the tip of the iceberg; not even, it is the 3 snowflakes on the top of the tip of the iceberg. I just hope that sometime in your higher education, a professor has the courage to return your work and say, 're-do this; you can do better'. I hope that you take the opportunity to find something that you're passionate about and instead of expanding outwards, dig deeper. Dig deeper than the life of John Donne, dig deeper than his poems, dig deeper than the stanzas, dig deeper than a sentence in that stanza, dig deep, even to the punctuation of the sentence and study it passionately." 

If that thought doesn't give you the chills, then something is way off balance because this is a profound message that can be applied to every aspect of life. By the seemingly "small and simple" things, like punctuation, "great things come to pass". Dr. Howard is passionate about what he teaches and has done the 'digging to the punctuation' in his area of expertise--and it shows in his eyes. This is what I hope for in my lifelong education and search for truth, both secular and spiritual. We can wait until someone else does the digging, but we won't gain the same things; the whole truth comes by us doing the actual digging ourselves, learning the determination it takes, experiencing the sweat and the blisters, and then feeling first-hand the euphoria of striking the gold, the full meaning of the comma.

What would it feel like to go through college actually listening to dozens of "Punctuation Professors" with fresh dirt on their hands from digging, with the mind-set that truth and intelligence are contributing to our seeking for more God in our lives? Would we pay more attention and fine-tune our mental radios? Would we try to apply the concepts and truths to our lives? Would we learn to love to learn? I answer with a resounding affirmative.

"Feast or Famine"? My Sociology professor (Dr. Ralph Brown) started the semester with telling us four rules that he has in his house--one of which is to "Always choose feast over famine." His point was that sometimes in life we get so caught up in the getting-it-done that we don't realize we are starving ourselves. Why in the world would someone spend thousands of dollars for something cheap and flimsy that will break the next day? Haven't we been taught to get the most "bang for our buck"? Instead, clever college kids cheat themselves of the best education they could get--they choose the famine over feast--as they devise ways to get out of reading the assigned material; they create GoogleDoc study guides shared with the class, so they only have to do half of the work; they cheer when a professor says they have to skip something due to lack of time. Why do we do this to ourselves? It's not logical, economical, or intelligent. I'm not exempting myself, I know I've been there once upon a time. But not anymore. My love for food has triumphed over the laziness and lack of perspective of the emaciated famine-goers.

I choose the feast: a 6-course meal, free refilled drinks, and never-ending soups and salads. Sure, it may take more effort to really focus and pay attention, but when you look over at the withering famine victims there will be no regret. So, as this semester began with my goal in mind, I loosened my belt preparing for my feast. And let me say, it has made all the difference in the universe. I come to class ready to be enlightened, and I leave class illuminated. Literally, that's why I am even writing this. I have dozens of post-it notes with the profound insights to truth that I had that day in class that I wish I had the time to expound on. I actually apply the princples to my everyday life. It's like each of my classes give me a new colored filter to look at the world through and now I am able to see things that I never knew were there before. 

I had to add that picture because that's how it really feels to me. It is exhilarating to see life with new perspectives. It's kind of sad to think of how many years of my life and learning I could have enjoyed and appreciated more. But I feel like an extremely lucky lottery winner to be part of the minuscule 6.7% of the world to have the opportunity for a college education. Some Many days I really wonder why I have been so blessed.
OH! and I almost forgot to mention a very wonderful bonus that comes with this way of seeking for higher learning and truth--my grades are better than they've ever been before, because it's real learning. I love this quote by our prophet President Thomas S. Monson:

"I tried to be attentive in any lecture in the classroom and to pretend that I would be called upon to present the same lecture to others. While this practice is very hard work, it certainly helps during test week [not to mention he had a photographic memory :)]...It is not the number of hours you put in, but what you put in the hours that counts." 

That is what I will attest to: it's "what you put in the hours that counts". And as I have tried to put my best into each hour of my search for truth and learning, I have learned to love learning, I have discovered the meaning of the punctuation in some topics, I have loosened my belt a couple notches due to my feast, and most importantly, I have come closer to my Heavenly Father. And that's the truth.