Favorite Memories of President Hinckley

While I have been around long enough to remember four different presidents of our church, President Hinckley is really the only one I have ever known.  I was too young to remember anything about President Kimball; however, I do remember his funeral.  By the time I was old enough to understand who President Benson was, the only tangible evidence of his presidency was his empty chair during General Conference.  My most lasting memory of President Hunter was that I learned about his death from the news scroll while watching the O.J. Simpson trial.  President Hinckley on the other hand, I have known my entire adult life, he was the president during my mission, and has been a constant I could rely on as an example.

1) "Be Ye Clean" I remember this talk.  It was the first time in my life that I knew a conference speaker meant their words for me.  I even reported on this talk for seminary.  Recently, President Hinckley gave this talk again during Priesthood session because he said that we needed a second dose, and that too few of us remembered it.  I felt a tinge of pride to not be in the group who didn't remember the talk.

2) "I challenge you to a dual"  Again, from conference.  I will never forget this moment as President Hinckley challenged Russell M. Nelson to a dual for giving a conference talk that President Hinckley described as a eulogy.  It was nice to see such an admirable person having a sense of humor.

3)  My Mission Call.  As many of you know there are very few things in life as exciting as getting a mission call.  I can honestly say that I was surprised by a call to the Philippines.  (I had my money on Russia-long story for another time).  I loved my mission though, and felt blessed to be sent to a country that was close to President Hinckley's heart.  He had dedicated the country in the 60's and had followed its phenomenal growth since then.  Shortly before my mission he had toured the Philippines, I'm always bummed that I missed that, but being able to share the Prophet's love for a spiritually blessed nation is something I will carry my entire life.

4) Temples.  I think just about everyone will have this on their list.  Once a person understands how amazing a temple is, there is no way someone cannot appreciate the building spree that took place during President Hinckley's tenure.  As someone who loves to travel, there is a great piece of mind being somewhere so far away from home, but knowing that you have access to a temple.  I'll particularly remember the contrast I felt after spending 4 months in mainland China and then being able to visit Hong Kong.  I made a Temple trip a high priority since it had been so long.  There were two other Americans in the room with me and everyone else was either Chinese or Filipino.  It was a powerful learning moment.

5) 90th Birthday.   It seems crazy to think that this was almost 8 years ago, but I got to go to the 90th Birthday celebration in the Conference Center.  It was the first major gathering held there, and it was basically a trial run for learning how to get people in and out of the building so they would have a working plan in place before General Conference.  Despite a fairly hectic seating, when it finally started it was great to be able to wish President Hinckley a happy birthday.  Although it wasn't part of the plan for the evening, it was great when Gladys Knight got the entire building to sing "Happy Birthday" (after the cameras were turned off of course, so the church wouldn't have to pay royalties). At the time I didn't think we'd get the chance to wish him many more, he sure showed me wrong.

6) The Perpetual Education Fund.  This was almost as though the brethren were reading my mind and knew what it was that was my biggest concern for the welfare of the Church back in the Philippines and other impoverished nations.  In reality it just shows how in touch they are with the problems facing real people.  At the time, I was at BYU and very concerned about what was becoming of people I knew back in the Philippines.  In reality I was getting regular reminders because I was still receiving email from girls desperate to marry me in order to get a chance at a better life here.  While unlike some of my missionary friends, I never tried to solve the problem that way, I was praying for the Church to implement some sort of plan to help members deal with the economic challenges of where they live.  Sure enough, I wasn't the only one concerned.

I'm sure I could list 20 other things, but I think that President Hinckley would probably worry that I was wasting my time.  He'd want us to move forward and not dwell on his death; to use the end of his life as a spiritual rebirth of ours.  While it is hard to imagine the First Presidency without Gordon B. Hinckley, I'm reminded of this quote:

"At the close of one particularly difficult day, I looked up at a portrait of Brigham Young that hangs on my wall. I asked, 'Brother Brigham, what should we do?' I thought I saw him smile a little, and then he seemed to say: 'In my day, I had problems enough of my own. Don’t ask me what to do. This is your watch. Ask the Lord, whose work this really is.' And this, I assure you, is what we do and must always do." 

Each Prophet is called to serve at a time when their service will do the most good.  While it is hard to imagine not having President Hinckley up there any more, the Lord has other men waiting in the benches, men who have been foreordained and set apart to serve at a time when they will be most effective.  I know that I can look forward to a lifetime of men serving in that position that I will respect as much as Gordon B. Hinckley.

Sorry, busy month

Well, I haven't had a chance to post for a while, finishing up the semester kept me very busy, plus I've worked full time at the store this last week to try and earn some extra green for Christmas.

Also, with class winding up, I didn't have that much to say. However, now I have some very important news to report:

Psychology of Sexual Behavior: A (3 Credits)
History and Systems of Psychology: A (3 Credits)
Quantitative Methods of Psychology: A (4 Credits)
Experimental Methods of Psychology: A (4 Credits)

For those of you who may not know, that is my first 4.o ever. Not only college, but high school too. I'm so relieved.

Very, very sad

Recently I assigned as a homework assignment to all my Priests. I had them read the following conference talk and then return and report on it:

The Sanctity of Womanhood by Elder Richard G. Scott

If you haven't read it in awhile, I recommend you review it because what I'm about to share highlights his point very well.

Today in my Human Sexuality class the topic was on rape. It is a touchy topic, but one that I was looking forward too since with a goal to be an adolescent therapist, I think that treating rape victims will be in my future.

At one point during the class our teacher talked about a very typical rape scenario, which is that a woman, on a date, has been flirty and permissive right up to insertion, then tells the man to stop. The teacher then asked the class two questions:

1) Does this constitute rape?

2) Was it the woman's fault?

To be very clear up front, the answers are: 1) YES 2) NO

The teacher then engaged the class into a discussion about the second question. He really wanted us to think about the situation, the definition of "fault," etc. Believe it or not a couple of guys said that the girl would be a bit at fault. Other people mentioned that at any time a woman should be able to say "no" and expect the situation to end.

I decided to say something and raised my hand. When the teacher called on me, I believe my exact response was "I want to make sure that I say this right. It is not the woman's fault, and no one should blame her. However, people in their lives occasionally make bad decisions that lead to unfortunate and unexpected consequences, that are not their fault. At the same time the decisions that led to those consequences can serve as an example to others to help them avoid similar circumstances."

It was the answer the teacher wanted, but a girl in the class could not have been angrier about what I said. She yelled out, "what, so girls aren't supposed to date?" I retorted that dating is one thing, but naked foreplay on the first date is usually a bad decision. At that point the class somewhat exploded and it took a few moments for the teacher to calm everybody down. He then moved on so that we could get through all the material for the day.

More happened then I can put into this whole post, but suffice to say this clearly illustrates the unfortunate state of womanhood in today's modern society described by Elder Scott. So many women nowadays only describe themselves in terms of their sexuality, and don't even know how to relate to men outside of that context.

Unfortunately, women will not be able to fix this problem themselves. It can only be done by men rising up to the higher standard set by modern prophets and then helping women reach their divine potential.

An interesting week and slightly new plans

I've had stuff that I've wanted to post about all week, but given that I had two tests this week, this is the first chance I've had to post anything.

The first thing to mention is that I've altered my approach to getting into graduate school slightly. In order to make sure that I've got a competitive background, I'm going to hang out at UNT a few extra months and get a second BA in psychology before applying to graduate school. This will give me a chance to explore which schools I want to go to during the next year, and give me the opportunity to work on some undergraduate research projects, which will increase my likelihood of being able to go to a school I want. It will also give me a bit more time to prepare for the GRE.


In more interesting news: One of my class instructors was FIRED this over last weekend!

Let me set the stage for this. The first day of class, this cocky graduate student announced that he would be teaching quantitative methods in psychology (statistics), and that we wouldn't have any homework, and that we'd have our grades based entirely on three tests. That would be fine, except that he was totally vague about what to study for the exams ("just know the materials in the chapters"). He thought that reviews were tantamount to cheating.

On top of that, the only way he'd ever lecture was by going through the most poorly designed Powerpoints I have ever seen. He'd rarely try to engage the students to see if they comprehended the material, and if he did ask a question for someone in the class to answer it was a dumb rhetorical one that there was no point in answering if you were following along, and meant nothing to you if you were completely lost.

The first exam in September ended up with an average of 59 and a median of 54, in stats lingo that means more people did worse then the average then did better (I got a 91). A good portion of the class dropped at that point, but most decided to stick with it. Most of the students were hoping that the low grades who inspire him to change his methods since they clearly demonstrated that he wasn't properly presenting the material. He didn't.

After he stuck to his poor teaching method a group of students went to him complaining that he needed to change methods, show more examples and take more time to see that everyone was following along. He instead lectured them that they were just lazy kids who weren't applying themselves and were spending too much time in college parties then studying. In reality a few of the complainers were middle aged mothers who had returned to school.

When he didn't listen they went to the department, but thought all of their complaints were falling on deaf ears. Finally the department chair said he'd sit in on the class for a few minutes, which he finally did on Wednesday of last week, two days before our second test.

I took the test on Friday and figured I got another A, but I knew that it would be beyond the ability of most of the class. I was pretty sure that the instructor was going to be going to be skewered on Monday during class, until an email from the department chair went out to everyone in our class Monday morning. This email was offering everyone in our class a short window of opportunity to take an "I" in the class, and then be allowed to retake the class without having to pay tuition for it. I had never heard anything like that ever happening before anywhere.

During the hour I had between classes I went up to chair I read in near where my class is and saw a good number of students from my class discussing this email wondering if this meant our grades on this test had been even worse. While we were all discussing this another student showed up who announced that she had tried to meet with our instructor during his office hours that morning, but he had refused to discuss anything with her because he was no longer he instructor. When she inquired as to the details he asked her to leave.

About 5 minutes into the start time of the class a tenured professor finally showed up to tell us that he'd be in charge of the class from this point on, but had only known that for about 3 hours. He didn't have any details about anything, but he had been told that almost everyone failed the tests that they had already scored. He then told us to take the rest of the time off, to consider the "I" option and that he'd have a new syllabus for us on Wednesday along with our grades up to that point, and how scoring would work for the rest of the semester.

Well, Wednesday rolled around and he had the syllabuses as promised, but no grades. For some reason our former TA could not be reached, and all of our first test scores had only been recorded as letter grades instead of actual test scores. As of today we still don't have our grades, because apparently the TA had a death in the family. Man when it rains it pours.

With all this happening and the fact that the same people who run the undergraduate program run the graduate program, I think you can all see why I've decided not to get my PhD from UNT.

Dan Rather and I.Q.

Sorry it has been so long since I've done a post, I had a test in statistics on Friday and I was pretty stressed out about it all week. I think I did alright though, so now I can stress over the two other tests I have this week.

Anyway, I thought I'd write a bit about a video we watched in History of Psychology. It was a 60 Minutes report from 1975, featuring a young Dan Rather discussing I.Q. with the big psychologists of the day. It mentioned all the big questions that 30 years later we still don't have the answers to: why so much disparity between whites' and blacks' scores? is intelligence a single construct or comprised of several abilities? does a low score really indicate a low ability to perform? etc. Given that we still don't have the answers now, I won't be holding my breath for any breakthroughs.

The other interesting thing that was brought up, in classic Dan Rather form, was a class warfare argument. I believe one direct quote from the film was "the only purpose intelligence tests serve in our society is as a tool for the middle class to disenfranchise the working class, and to justify racism by using a 'scientific' measurement." I found that all very interesting since the middle vs. working class argument does not exist in today's class warfare vernacular, now it's the upper class vs. the middle class. Since there isn't an I.Q. discrepancy between those two groups I doubt we'll hear John Edwards citing I.Q. tests in his approach to class warfare.

Why Al Gore doesn't deserve the Nobel Peace Price

Okay, I know that this is my "Psych" blog, but my first college love was Political Science, and it will always be important to me. This is why I have to vent on one of the worst choices for peace prize ever.

First off, let me state that I am not in Climate Change denial. I just think our time and money would be better spent preparing for natural disasters (caused by climate change or not) than hobbling our economies based on incomplete science.

The real tragedy in giving the Nobel to Al Gore is that his view of Global Warming is more likely to increase violence and anonymity in the world than reduce it. His view is based on a global Marxist perspective of "haves" (those causing the problem) and "have nots" (those on the receiving end of the disaster). This is the same ideology that Chavez of Venezuela, Ahmadinejad of Iran, and Castro of Cuba use to enslave their own populations. Sooner or later these renegades are going to start using Global Warming rhetoric to defy the world community.

Who thinks giving these guys more ammo against America will bring peace to the world?

Another First

A couple of months ago I did a post commenting on how, for the first time in my life, I had read a textbook from cover to cover. Well, that might not have been the best thing to brag about at 29 years of age, but this sure is:

For the first time in my life I SET THE CURVE ON AN EXAM!

I just finished my History and Systems of Psychology class and we went over the test from last Friday. Now, when I finished that test I did not feel confident about my score at all, and it was the first time I finished a test this semester not feeling good about my performance. There had been 64 questions, 2 of which I didn't remember the material at all, and about 12 of which were familiar, but I didn't know for sure what the answer was. As we sat down in class today the professor states that as a class we did good, and that he had adjusted the scores so that our raw scores would be out of 52 questions instead of 64 to set an accurate distribution. So I sat there in agony as they handed out our tests (waiting for a graded test to be handed out is one of the areas of my life where I have no control whatsoever over my internal stress and anxiety). Low and behold, I got a 53.

It turned out that my own personal assessment following the test was pretty accurate, I mean I did get 11 wrong, but fortunately for me the test was hard enough that no one else did better than that.