Matt L's Response to "What I Now Believe"

Oh the irony.  I love how I get to respond to this big, grand finale type RFIW article all about how to make the best of our BYU educations and be the best students we can be when I, the grandsire of all procrastination and goof-offery, am scrambling to write this blog response the night before and with a fully lackluster attitude.   I just can’t defeat the thought that none of you could give a crap what I’m writing and will only be reading this response because you’re required to.  Frankly, I don’t care either, and I’m kinda playing the same game as you folks.  In fact, I intend to use this blog post as a kind of experiment more than anything. See, I’m hypothesizing that people leave the most comments on the responses that are the shortest/ most skimmable because none of us really care about any of these articles or our peer’s responses and once a week we just go online and choose the path of least resistance.  So I apologize: even though this article would persuade me to do otherwise, I’m going to try to keep this brief in the name of science. And also in the name of my unfinished Great Works responses.

            So as revealed before, I am no one to expound on Richard’s words here.  I would be such a dirty hypocrite, and I can’t afford to be defamed like that or have you lovely people hate me, oh no no. So instead, I thought I would write about ways you and I fail at making the best of our stays at BYU, because I’m definitely a credible source when it comes to failure.

Ready? Follow

                        Meeee

                               eeeeeeeeeeee

                                                  eeeeeee!!!

Richard’s first belief: We should view our education in an “eternal context” in order to make the best of our mortal and post-mortal lives.  This means we work with goals and have a sense of mission and spirituality within our learning.

A Failure’s interpretation:  Psych!  To be honest, I pretty much work assignment to assignment and think of nothing but finishing so I can sleep.  I am the natural man if there ever was one, and although I like learning stuff, I don’t exactly view my homework as any kind of channel for learning.  Everything just seems like busy work to me.  Things like this, for example, I’m doing just because I have to.  And I know I’m not alone in this.  We all have an imperfect perspective of learning because it’s far easier to jump through hoops than to actually stand back and refine our knowledge.  To paraphrase Richards, “Knock it off, Matt”

Belief # 2:  Our professors are there to help us.  They’re in the same boat as we are, just trying to perfect themselves and others and share their knowledge with us to promote our eternal well being.

Failure says:  Our professors are our friends? LIARS!  They are the enemy, just waiting to trap me with some kind of knowledgeable trickery and expose all my well disguised dumbness.  I try to look at my professors as friends, but in certain cases they seem more like crazy people than anyone I want to look to for help, which holds me back in a big way from getting the most out of my education.  I need to stop competing with them, figuratively, and practice learning for a change. 

The Final Belief:      Richards finally suggests that we “consecrate [our time at BYU] unto Him” (21) and, somewhat reiterating his first belief, never let the world’s standards replace or supersede the higher standards of a “consecrated” people. 

I’m Special:  Finally! One area where I don’t completely suck.  Personally, and I think about everyone is with me here, I manage to keep my standards in place at BYU.  You’ve pretty much got to try to commit any major sin here, and because we live as students live apart from the carnal influences outside of this place, we can grow and progress in ways that seemed miles away a couple months ago.  It’s so much easier here to get in a spiritual zone, and from there it gets a lot easier to lace spirituality in with your academics.  While I do suffer from “academic bulimia” (20) as I’m sure many of you my fellow peers/adoring fans do, I still do learn a lot, sometimes against my will.  Richards did an excellent job of picking me up and brushing the dust off of me in this section after those guilt trips in the first two sections.  After coming to BYU I feel like I stand for something, and I have a reputation and a mission larger than myself to uphold by studying here.  I expect more of myself, and so does the world, and I do feel like I’m learning how to be the best representative of Christ as I can.  In a world that belittles Christ repeatedly, it feels good to know that I’m at least preparing myself to do what is right in a secular world, and let my secular side complement my religious one at the same time.

And that’s all I can really say about this article.  Dang good speaking is what it is.  I wish I could have been at the devotional for this one.  I need a good kick in the pants every once in a while, and this article caught me off guard.  Good for you, Richards.  Hopefully I’ll catch on before it’s too late.