Christmas in July

It's hot here.  I thought listening to Christmas music would help, but I chose the wrong album:  "Wintersong" by Sarah McLachlan*.  It's still hot here, and now I'm just feeling melancholy.

"Wintersong"

"Song for a Winter's Night"

At least this is happening now.  I don't think I could handle it at actual Christmas.  Oh well, back to wishing I had a river that I could skate away on...

*This is the only time that I will use the words "wrong" and "Sarah McLachlan" in the same sentence.

My Sacrament Meeting Talk

This weekend, I prepared a ten-minute Sacrament meeting talk that was some of my best work.  I felt really good about everything that I put in it, and I'll even go so far as to say that I think some of it was inspired.

Then I fell victim to what I call The Curse of the Closing Speaker.  The second speaker went way over time and I was left with only five minutes.  I was a little perturbed, and I was so tempted to go against everything I believe in and go over time myself, but I couldn't do that.  I took the last five minutes of the meeting time and gave half of my talk.

I almost cried when I sat back down.  My talk was so good and I felt so cheated at not being able to give it! So I'm going to sum up my talk here on my blog.

My topic was "Finding Strength in the Scriptures".  Because I don't like to talk in hypotheticals, I wanted to demonstrate (I'm not a good enough philosopher to prove) logically that it was possible to find strength in the scriptures.  Feeling rather literal, I looked in the Topical Guide for "Strength".  Coming up with scriptures like Exodus 15:2, 2 Samuel 22:33, and Mosiah 9:17, it's clear to see that our strength is our God.  There are multiple scripture references wherein the Lord is equated with His Word (Revelation 19:13, for instance).  So if we define the scriptures as The Word of God, we can rationalize that is is indeed possible to derive strength from the scriptures.  So how do we do this?

If you had to describe the scriptures to someone who had never heard of them before, and had to do so without mentioning God or doctrine, you could say that the scriptures are "a collection of stories about people doing hard things".  In the scriptures we find examples of people who persevered/endured when they had it way worse than we do.  We can find parallels to our own lives when we feel lost, overwhelmed, alone, and hopeless.

We can find strength in the scriptures by learning essential doctrine to keep us on the right path away from temptation.  We can be reminded of the blessings of righteousness and the consequences of sin.  Finally, we can be reminded of the Atonement and the promises our Heavenly Father gives us.  Scriptures that are especially precious to me when I need comfort and inspiration are D&C 121:7-8 and D&C 122:7-9.

I then referenced Richard G. Scott's 2011 talk, "The Power of Scripture".

Some scriptural examples of people finding strength in the scriptures:

• 2 Nephi 4:15.  Nephi glories in the scriptures at a hard time in his life:  his father just died and he's stuck with Laman and Lemuel, who are, by all accounts, horrible people.
• Matthew 4:1-11.  Christ (whom we should consider the ultimate example of spiritual strength) endures temptation during His fast (a time of physical and emotional weakness) by quoting scripture. 

Then (and this is the part of my talk that I wasn't able to give, even though I wanted to so much!), I proposed a different way of looking at taking strength from the scriptures by telling the following stories/examples:

• Jacob 1:2,4.  One of the things I find most fascinating about the Book of Mormon is how tedious it must have been to engrave all of those records on brass plates, and yet these people felt what they were writing was so important that they did it anyway.
• Moroni 1:1-4.  To paraphrase this chapter, Moroni is basically saying, "So I didn't think I was going to write anymore, because I thought I'd be dead by now since all of these Lamanites are trying to kill me, but since I'm not dead, I guess I'll write some more because it might be worthwhile to the Lamanites (who are trying to kill me, by the way)."
• Moving forward a thousand years or so, we see the examples of John Wycliffe and William Tyndale, people who were viewed as heretics and killed because they tried to translate the Bible into English.
• Then there's the story of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, as described in Jeffrey R. Holland's testimony of the Book of Mormon.

Basically where I was going with these examples is that tremendous effort, sacrifice--sweat and blood--went  into assembling the scriptures.  While the scriptures are the Word of God, but there is an indisputable human component to them as well.  As we read and study the scriptures, we show that those sacrifices and efforts are not in vain.  The scriptures are imbued with the testimonies and spirits of those who cared enough about us to give them to us, and we can gain strength from them as we read them.

So that was basically my talk.  People did seem to like the parts I gave, though, and I felt that it was pretty skillful on my part to make it all work in five minutes.  Maybe next time I get asked to speak in Sacrament meeting, I'll give the second half (or so I "joked" to the Branch President afterwards).  But at least I got to share it with you all.

In other news, I got called to be Relief Society Music Coordinator.  I guess I'm going to be pigeonholed in music callings for the rest of my days.  Sigh.

Incentive

A few days ago, I blogged about my target GRE scores (I'm not going to link to it, just scroll down if you want to see what they are).  I decided that if I get these scores, I'm going to reward myself by buying myself a box set of all seven Harry Potter books as I've finally read them all, and after tonight, will have seen all the movies.

In other news, here are some things about my day that were good:  I went to the dentist and had zero cavities; I ate Panda Express for lunch (Chow Mein and Chow Fun--I like the Chow Mein Better--with Orange Chicken and Eggplant Tofu); I went shopping at the Ala Moana Center (the most intimidatingly large mall ever, but fun to walk around and have a mindless shopping day); I bought as much produce as I could carry at Sam's Club; and I got an awesome present in the mail from Laura Taylor.

What Should I Call Forensic Anthropology?

If I were more inspired had more free time to waste I would make one of those Tumblr pages like the ones they have about law school, grad school, and being Mormon*, but I'd make it about forensic anthropology.  Since there aren't too many forensic anthropologists though, it probably wouldn't be stunningly popular, but here's one that I came up with today:

Coloring in my Homunculus:

*Laura Taylor, don't you dare look this one up until after you take the bar exam!

Goals

I'm taking the GRE again for two reasons:  1) I hate fun, and 2) My original scores (though quite respectable) are four years old, and some programs to which I'm applying want scores that are a little more recent.  So I'm studying again, and I'm a little more intimidated this time, as I've spent the past years surrounded by some really smart people who have made me realize that my scores were not as awesome as I thought they were*.  It's okay though, because this motivates me to really study and kick the Revised GRE's bum.

Now fun as it may be, bum-kicking is a very vague goal, so here, for all the world to witness, are my target scores for the GRE (which has been revised so that it's now scored from 130-170 instead of 200-800):

Verbal Reasoning:  165 (95th Percentile)

Quantitative Reasoning:  167 (96th Percentile)

Analytical Writing:  5.0 (92nd Percentile)**

If I don't meet these goals, I won't kill myself or anything, but I'll probably have to start dating dumber guys.

*Really, they were fine.  Maybe not NSF-GRFP fine, but good enough to get me looked at seriously by a lot of good programs.
**Because it's really, really hard for me to get inspired in only 30 minutes.

How Today Ended up Not Sucking

What?  A positive post from Little Miss Mopey Von Hatesithere?  That's right.  Today had major sucking potential, but it all got turned around.

I was supposed to go meet the head honcho of the Forensic Science Academy at the other laboratory building on Pearl Harbor at 1300 (that's 1:00 for you civilian-types) so I figured I'd walk there from where my office is on my lunch hour.  I used to walk everywhere in Provo and Boston, so no sweat, right?

Turns out, lots of sweat.  So much sweat.  It was freaking hot outside at high noon (but apparently only on one side--my arms are asymmetrically sunburned now).  To top it all off, I got lost.  The bad thing about these military bases is that everything looks the same.  There are no landmarks.  Here's an analogy for you Boston people:

Turn left at the tan building with the brown roof : Hickam :: Turn left at the Dunkin' Donuts : Boston

Yeah.  Also, it doesn't help that my sense of direction is nonfunctional on this island where everything is basically one big circle and there are extra directional terms like "Windward" and "Leeward" (still will never know which one is which).  I digress.

So Hot Alex + Running Late Alex + Lost Alex = Frustrated, angry, tearful Alex.  

Thankfully, I figured out where I was supposed to go (it turns out I had turned right when I should have turned left so there was some backtracking involved) and got there only fifteen minutes late (I called the guy and told him I was late/lost and it was fine).  I still looked (and smelled) way worse than I would ever want to look (and smell) for an appointment with a really important forensic anthropologist.  After spending two minutes at the water fountain and thirty seconds in the ladies' room wiping off my face, I sat down with the guy to talk about my assessment.   Here's where the "not sucking" happened:

What I was expecting:  "You call yourself a forensic anthropologist?  You giant fraud!  How did you even get this job!  Leave this place immediately!"

What actually happened:  "Overall, good work.  Here are a few things that you need to fix*, but I think you'll do well here."

Also, there was an impromptu quiz on fragmentary osteology.  I rocked the pants off of that impromptu quiz on fragmentary osteology.  

Sure, I still smell awful, and my right arm has attained a level of crimson lacking in my left arm, but things turned out not all that bad.  With all of these experiences that I have, I've kind of developed a new way of thinking:

"When life sucks, don't worry:  you still have forensic anthropology."

Skeleton, you are my friend.

*Like photography, which was no surprise.  I suck at taking pictures, probably because cameras that are worth more than my life intimidate the heck out of me.

Phantom

My right hand hasn't yet forgotten that it used to wear a ring.  I haven't worn a ring on my right hand for over a month, and yet my thumb keeps pawing* at where it used to be.  I wish habits, like rings, were also things that could be put away in one's jewelry box.

*Can thumbs paw?  I can't think of a better verb.