OK so my dad looks like one of those guys that would be mean, stern, and have no sense of hummer. This would be completely incorrect however because he is one of the funniest guys that I have ever known. No one has ever made me laugh so hard as him especially when he tries to talk like the young hip kids that are in his classes. He sends me e-mails periodically and lots of times they are short and just silly but sometimes he sends me one that not only makes me laugh but also makes me feel like everything is going to alright. I got just that kind of message from him the other day and just had to share it. It may only be funny to me but look at the underlining message and maybe it will make you remember why you are doing the things you are doing.
Dear Students:
You would probably be surprised to know how many of your BYU professors know who you are and who make your academic welfare and progress the subject of their daily meditations and prayers. You might also consider why God, in His wisdom, brought you “a rugged billion miles,” as Emily Dickinson says, from wherever you came to place you at the feet of inspired men and women at this great school. I know for sure that God brought me and my family a hard, rugged billion miles to be here as your University 101 instructor. As the Purifier says to Riddick, “We all began as something else.” After defeats and reversals, I washed ashore in Utah, and now “here I am where I ought to be” (Karen Blixen, Out of Africa), doing things I never imagined I would be doing when I was your age. I thought I would go into law, because I admired the attorneys I knew. My patriarchal blessing told me to fill my “mind with learning of all kinds” and to prepare myself for “a life of service.” I took that revelatory, prophetic statement seriously and despite all obstacles I worked hard, kept commitments, helped others, and welcomed correction. I wore my hair and beard long, studied the philosophies of men, shook hands with Satan, read several thousand books (most of them now in my library, most of them great, a few pretty horrific), produced a dissertation on “Women, Marriage, and Sexuality in Herman Melville’s Work, a cultural-gender study,” and ultimately “donned the robes of a corrupt priesthood” (Nibley), all the while with a temple recommend in my pocket and a firm resolve to be obedient to God’s will. I often see my daughter read her patriarchal blessing during the sacrament, and I hope you consult yours occasionally to remind yourself of why you decided to come to BYU in the first place. I also hope that when you encounter resistance at school that you will take your problems to the Lord rather than murmuring against your teachers like Nephi’s brothers. When they pushed back against his instruction of them, he asked them directly: “Have ye inquired of the Lord?” They, of course, replied no, because “The Lord makes no such things known to us.” No wonder there. These were boys who spent their nights gaming and loitering (“We lurk late,” say the boys at the sign of the Golden Shovel in Gwendolyn Brooks poem “we real cool.”), and spent their days sleeping and loitering. They had their women with them.
Dear Students:
You would probably be surprised to know how many of your BYU professors know who you are and who make your academic welfare and progress the subject of their daily meditations and prayers. You might also consider why God, in His wisdom, brought you “a rugged billion miles,” as Emily Dickinson says, from wherever you came to place you at the feet of inspired men and women at this great school. I know for sure that God brought me and my family a hard, rugged billion miles to be here as your University 101 instructor. As the Purifier says to Riddick, “We all began as something else.” After defeats and reversals, I washed ashore in Utah, and now “here I am where I ought to be” (Karen Blixen, Out of Africa), doing things I never imagined I would be doing when I was your age. I thought I would go into law, because I admired the attorneys I knew. My patriarchal blessing told me to fill my “mind with learning of all kinds” and to prepare myself for “a life of service.” I took that revelatory, prophetic statement seriously and despite all obstacles I worked hard, kept commitments, helped others, and welcomed correction. I wore my hair and beard long, studied the philosophies of men, shook hands with Satan, read several thousand books (most of them now in my library, most of them great, a few pretty horrific), produced a dissertation on “Women, Marriage, and Sexuality in Herman Melville’s Work, a cultural-gender study,” and ultimately “donned the robes of a corrupt priesthood” (Nibley), all the while with a temple recommend in my pocket and a firm resolve to be obedient to God’s will. I often see my daughter read her patriarchal blessing during the sacrament, and I hope you consult yours occasionally to remind yourself of why you decided to come to BYU in the first place. I also hope that when you encounter resistance at school that you will take your problems to the Lord rather than murmuring against your teachers like Nephi’s brothers. When they pushed back against his instruction of them, he asked them directly: “Have ye inquired of the Lord?” They, of course, replied no, because “The Lord makes no such things known to us.” No wonder there. These were boys who spent their nights gaming and loitering (“We lurk late,” say the boys at the sign of the Golden Shovel in Gwendolyn Brooks poem “we real cool.”), and spent their days sleeping and loitering. They had their women with them.
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