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| Jon and I the morning of Graduation. |
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| Graduation Day! |
Jon graduated with both his Masters and Bachelors of Accounting. I'm still so proud of him. He is a really intelligent guy! I graduated with my Bachelor's degree: majoring in School Health Education and minoring in Coaching and Physical Education. After five years of working my tooshie of in school (not including high school), I graduated Summa Cum Laude and was the Valedictorian of my department. I felt very proud of my accomplishment but also a little insignificant. Sometimes I really don't feel like I am very "smart". I feel like I am really good at working hard and doing my homework, but I don't feel like I have very much natural intelligence. When I was asked to speak at graduation I was scared to death about it! I didn't feel like I was qualified and was sure everyone else would feel the same. Plus, speaking in front of a Marriott Center full of people was like the most nerve racking thing I had every done!
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| Me speaking at graduation. |
In the end, I think everything went well. I didn't pass out while I was speaking and Jon and I both received our diplomas and our family members made it safely to support us. It was an awesome day of celebrating our long worked for achievements. I felt a bit like a tent in my graduation robe, considering I was about 7 months pregnant, but besides that everything was great. It was great for me and Jon to be able to graduate together and share that great day! It will definitely be a good memory for years to come!
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| Jon with his Diploma. |
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| Receiving my diploma. |
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| Me with my diploma. |
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| My friend Sharsti and I. She was my best friend in school and helped get me though our major! |
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| Me and Jon with our Diplomas! |
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| Me and Jon with my parents. |
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| My sister Pam, Mom, Me, Jon, Dad, and Brynlee. |
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| Jon's Family: Brett, Amberly, Cici, Elaina, Nora, Heather, Owen |
My graduation speech.
On my first day at BYU, I was very
impressed with the monument at the entrance of the school that displays the
challenge “Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve.”
On that first day, this challenge planted itself in my mind and has remained
throughout the years. I have thought
about it often and what it means for me in my life.
Enter to Learn. Throughout
my college education, I have learned many things. I have learned how to write essays, the
hundreds of bones and muscles in the human body, how to make gourmet candies,
classifications of drugs, First Aid, methods of teaching, classroom management,
clogging, and a great variety more. As
valuable as all of these pieces of knowledge are, I could have learned them at
any university. The difference is that I
learned them at BYU, where the learning of secular knowledge is built upon the
firm foundation of spiritual knowledge. President
Henry B. Eyring taught, “True
learning must have a powerful
spiritual component. That spiritual element, when it is effective, refines and
uplifts the aims of our total education.”
For the past several years, we have
all enjoyed the opportunity to gain our educations at this marvelous university
where spiritual and secular learning have been combined. Through religion courses, devotionals, church
callings, interactions with teachers and other students, and the unique feeling
of learning on a dedicated campus, we have been taught that spiritual learning
comes before secular learning. This
spiritual foundation has provided us with quality educations and experiences
that are unique to this university. In a
talk given by Elder L. Tom Perry at BYU in 1995, he taught, “If we provide a
spiritual foundation for our secular learning, not only will we better
understand the laws of nature, we can gain a deeper understanding about art,
languages, technology, medicine, law, and human behavior never before imagined
possible. We can see the world around us
and understand it through God’s eyes.”
The blessings of learning at this
university are far greater than I’m sure any of us can imagine. By “entering to learn” at BYU, we have been
given much, and in return- we have much to give.
Go Forth to Serve. President Eyring explained the connection
between learning and service when he taught, “The real life we’re preparing for is eternal life. Secular
knowledge has for us eternal significance. Our conviction is that God, our
Heavenly Father, wants us to live the life that He does. All we can learn that
is true while we are in this life will rise with us in the Resurrection. And
all that we can learn will enhance our capacity to serve. That is a destiny
reserved not alone for the brilliant, those who learn the most quickly, or
those who enter the most respected professions. It will be given to those who
are humbly good, who love God, and who serve Him with all their capacities,
however limited those capacities are—as are all our capacities, compared with
the capacities of God.”
All
of our learning, all of our education that we have gained while here at BYU,
has enhanced our capacities to serve God and our fellow men. We have been given the gift of education in
order that we may help lift those around us.
Unfortunately, it is easy to get caught up in the doctrine Elder Perry
calls “me-ism”. I gained my education. I earned my diploma. I got a great job. I
deserve a raise. I shouldn’t have to help others. When we become trapped in the “me” mindset,
we forget to whom we owe our knowledge, we fail to use our education to serve
others, and our potentials are greatly limited.
Elder Perry teaches, “An important part of life is serving and
sharing. Certainly the soul-satisfying
joy of life is leaving a legacy of love and service for others to emulate and
enjoy.” He continues by quoting from
Steven R. Covey’s First Things First,
“Service is that virtue that distinguished the great of all times and which
they will be remembered by. It places a
mark of nobility upon its disciples. It
is the diving line which separates the two great groups of the world—those who
help and those who hinder, those who lift and those who lean, those who
contribute and those who consume. How
much better it is to give than to receive.
Service in any form is comely and beautiful...”
When
we forget ourselves and use our educations to serve God and our fellow men, we
are promised blessings of happiness, joy, nobility, love, and much more. These blessings offer far more than we could
ever hope to achieve on our own.
Though
we are graduating today and will leave BYU to pursue various paths and careers,
our education must never stop. All that
we have learned, and all that we have yet to learn, will enable us to better
serve those around us. The Lord has a
plan for each of us. He has given us
each unique experiences and opportunities, as well as the gift of receiving an
education here at BYU. President Eyring
taught, “The Lord and His Church have always encouraged education to increase
our ability to serve Him and our Heavenly Father’s children. For each of us, whatever our talents, He has
service for us to give. And to do it
well always involves learning, not once or for a limited time, but
continually.”
As
we continue in life, may we all strive to use our learning to lift those around
us. May we remember the blessings we
have received while attending BYU, where secular knowledge is built on the
foundation of spiritual knowledge. May
we continually learn and serve as we
progress toward our eternal goal.
I
am forever grateful for the opportunity I have enjoyed to gain my education at
this great university. Thank You.
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