Decisions

Decision making is a huge part of each individual's life. The best way for Americans to educated and informed decisions is for them to be exposed to many different views and opinions. When people only listen to louder echoes of their own voices (especially over the internet), their views can become narrow and fragmentation and a series of uninformed decisions may come. Since citizens elect the officials that will be representing them, it is important to know all sides of candidates and issues that they will be addressing. While they can hear the good effects of a particular decision that would be made by a candidate, if they do not understand the negative effects, things could turn catastrophic. For example, if most people from a particular party favored expansion of the United States into other territories and voted for a candidate who said that he would do this, a war could possibly be started with other countries and citizens of other countries would be put in harm’s way.

A Season of Thanks Giving

With it being Thanksgiving, I thought it would be appropriate to write about gratitude. This month for visiting teaching, we had to pick a talk from General Conference. My roommate and I chose President Monson's talk on gratitude. He tells us to remember all the good in the world instead of dwelling on the bad. This talk came up again with my visiting teachers as they taught me and also in relief society last sunday. Of course, everyone was thinking about Thanksgiving which influenced their choice to talk about this specific talk. However, it was interesting that the main points each person pointed out from the talk was almost exactly the same. The first point was what I said before about remembering and being grateful for all of the good in the world. The second point was a quote by President Joseph F. Smith which says, "a prayerful life is the key to possessing gratitude." Everyone focused on the fact that our gratitude for our Savior, Jesus Christ, is the most important. Without Him, we wouldn't have anything else to be grateful for. This Thanksgiving season, I'm going to focus on remembering all of the things I'm grateful for, especially the little things, and espeicially Jesus Christ.

Bruce, Bruckner, and Einstein Stop Time

Our subjects are from the same planet but different worlds.

• Bruce Springsteen - "The Boss" of New Jersey, a legendary god of Rock and Roll
• Anton Bruckner - 19th Century composer who wrote beautiful yet tragic music until the day he died
• Albert Einstein - Physicist who won a Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect and developed the math behind large and small mass physics.

What do these three men of differing backgrounds have in common? It is their ability to stop time dead where it stands.

Einstein's ability to stop time is least surprising. After all, physicists can do anything, right? Einstein proposed that when approaching a mass density of near infinite proportions, the space/time continuum would warp, slowing time until the inevitable moment it stopped altogether. Although Einstein never quite managed to perform this feat in time to forestall his own death, his discovery still influences physics today.

Bruce Springsteen and Anton Bruckner are far more curious cases. How do a rock musician with terrible pitch and a depressed, dying composer manage to stop freeze time? The answer takes us back to the first week of class.

Kairos.

It's that indescribable sensation that the world has dropped away entirely for that moment. Although a watch could measure the phenomenon in hours and minutes, you know it lasted far longer than that.

Last Tuesday (16 Nov), "The Boss" stopped by Jimmy Fallon's late night show and performed two songs. As he does frequently in his arena shows, Springsteen went over his allotted time. "?uestlove", Fallon's drummer said of the experience,

"If you look at the last 20 seconds [of "Because the Night"], all of us are literally in a circle. It's like no one else is in that room except Little Steven, the Professor, Bruce, and all seven of my guys," says ?uestlove. "We're totally disregarding the minute mark and the deadline. I'm surprised they got it all on there 'cause Lord knows we went 32 bars over." [courtesy of Rolling Stone]

Two days later (18 Nov), the Utah Symphony Orchestra stopped by BYU, performing Anton Bruckner's final symphony, the famous No. 9. As the final notes faded away, the conductor left his baton in the air long after the end of the song. As it dropped to his side, complete silence filled the hall. For fifteen seconds, the crowd struggled to break the musical hypnosis.

Finally, the first pair of hands began to clap and slowly the rest of the room joined in. According to the program, Symphony No. 9 runs just under an hour, but everybody in the room knew differently. Decades of anguish and joy, disappointment and triumph had been poured into Bruckner's final work, written as his mind and body broke down. No, that one hour had lasted far longer than sixty mere minutes.

A good life should never be measured in years and months. It's true, we only live for so long, but it's what we do with our time that makes us who we are.

Don't ever let time get in your way. It is, after all, only here for a moment.

Jargon

“There’s probably some of you in here that have taken the technical writing course,” a course required for the majors in the room.

I looked around and saw a few nod their heads

“You’re taught in it to avoid jargon. Now this is one of the times that you can’t really avoid jargon.”

I flashed back to my statistics class last year.

“So why do we have to phrase it that way?”

“First of all, it’s the clearest way of explaining it that isn’t incorrect, and second of all, if you give an incorrect explanation, it can get you into legal trouble.”

Back here in Stat 201, the teacher went on to explain the common errors people make that are wrong.

“Now before I explain how you’re supposed to explain this, here’s some common errors people make…”

I believe there is a language we enjoy using to prove we are knowledgeable on a subject. Instead of baptism, we say waters of Judah. Instead of the Messiah, we say the stem of Jesse. This isn’t necessarily bad. It’s the principle of “milk before meat,” and applies to everything we learn.

We must know our audience. We may look smart when we say something like “integrate the module into the GUI subroutine,” but when we say instead we’re just making computer programs that send numbers and variables to each other, we may be oversimplifying, but it’s very necessary. In this case, knowing our audience does not only tell us whether we need point-first or point-last statements, but also whether we need a lengthy exposition in the middle to explain the foreign terminology we are about to use.

Possibly the most difficult element is that we have to do this all while keeping the reader interested. If successful, and we explain a revolutionary new tool in the required terminology, we can find ourselves with a devoted audience, but if there is a disconnect in communication, the audience will not be at fault for their ignorance.

We will soon not be strangers to this disconnect. A friend of my brother’s worked in an internship at Honeywell, claiming he didn’t understand all the acronyms and language until 6 month’s time. My sister-in-law, a middle-school English teacher, said that just the acronyms used for paperwork and reports took a few weeks to learn.

Advice to everyone in just about every field of study: know your audience, and simplify accordingly.

Change as the constant

In scientific experiments, constants are essential. As a scientist, you are always trying to be sure to account for every possible variable, to make sure that absolutely everything is the same each time you repeat a procedure, so that you can see the effect of that one intended change you make.

Life is kind of the opposite. As the saying goes, the only constant is change. The world around us is constantly changing as time goes by, people come and go, technology progresses. Most often we are even working to change ourselves, trying to exercise more, waste less time, serve others more, be better.

In the experiment of life - our effort to learn and progress and become like our Father in Heaven - change must be held constant. We keep our hearts changing and our lives changing as we constantly strive to become better. Just as holding everything constant in a science experiment allows us to see the effects of the intentional variables we introduce, so our constant effort to change ourselves allows us to take advantage of the effects of the central part of life's experiment that does not change - the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ.

This idea of changing all kinds of things at once, all the while focusing not on any of those changes but on a single element that will never change, does not sound anything like science. And I am so grateful that it does not, because as wonderful as science is, it is by no means a sure thing.
Science experiments go inexplicably wrong all the time, and that is considered completely normal. But I can be absolutely sure that my life experiment will not go wrong because constant change for the better is about faith, not science. Jesus Christ will never fail me, and knowing that is all that really matters.

An Attitude of Gratitude

A week or so ago my brother and I drove up to Salt Lake to enjoy a saturday night together. We went shopping, went to a movie, and topped off the evening with an enjoyable meal. As we walked back to the car to head home, we saw a homeless man huddled down on the side walk, trying to stay warm. I stood there, looking at the man as a wave of pity for the man came over me. It was so sad that he had nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, and I would have bet he hadn't eaten in days.

As we drove home, I couldn't help but think of that poor man and how hard his life must be. I then thought how incredibly grateful I am for having a place to go each night, instead of trying to find warmth on a freezing concrete corner in Salt Lake. I've been thinking a lot lately about some of the things I'm grateful for. Maybe it's because Thanksgiving is just around the corner, but I think people should always have an attitude of gratitude, not just around the holidays.

Everything in my life, I am grateful for. Not just the good things, but also the hard and difficult trials that I face. I'm so grateful for who I am and where I come from. I seriously love my family so much, and I share a special bond with each and every one one of my siblings and parents. I'm so blessed to be here at this university and there is nowhere I would rather be. I'm grateful I live in a day and age where a girl like me can actually attain an education and with it, have a career of her choosing. I'm grateful for little things as well, like my bed, thai food, Dr. Pepper, books, boys, cell phones, and music. As well as being grateful for the big things in our lives like having a home, family, and the gospel, I think it's just as important, if not more, to be grateful for the little things in our lives.

I found this quote the other day that I really liked:

"Can you see the holiness in those things that you take for granted- a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul"

- Rabbi Harold Kushner

I like this because it's true. We need to be aware and grateful for even the little things in our lives and see the good and positive in every situation. As hard as that can be, it can ultimately change our lives.

Relativity of Size

This semester I am enrolled in both a chemistry and a biology class. In these classes, we examine different aspects of the world around us on a submicroscopic scale. I always knew that life was complex, but now I realize truly how amazing life is. So many different processes come together to make our bodies work as a unit.
We discussed in chemistry how there are more atoms in a mole of element than there are stars in the known universe, or grain of sands on the beaches of the earth. This concept is truly mind-boggling. With a perspective such as that, we can look at ourselves as giants--massive creatures made up of a vast amount of materials. Infinitely complex and nothing short of a miracle.
Then, when preparing to register for classes I stumbled upon the astronomy classes. I was reminded of an Imax movie I saw about the universe and the vast expanse of space. The sizes of the galaxies in the universe are just as unimaginable as is the size of an atom or electron.
As a Latter-Day Saint, I realize that these relative sizes serve a most holy purpose. We are here on earth to grow and develop. While our bodies were made by a Creator, they must follow physical laws, else they not exist, and God be a liar. But as He does not lie, our bodies are fashioned in a physical sense obeying the physical laws of nature. That is why we are so complex. A temple for an offspring of our Heavenly Father should be no less.
Our Father has innumerable creations, thus immense expanse of space. There must be a place for each one of these creations.
As I pondered these sizes, it makes me grateful for the positions and experiences in which I find myself. There are a great many other places where I could find myself, yet I am here because my Father knows what is best for me. Being here at BYU is what is best for me.