Monday, May 30, 2011

It's summer, what to do...

Well, looks like it's about that time of year: The birds are (not) chirping, the sun is (not) out, and all the hot girls are (not) chillin around. Looks like another great summer in Logan.

Okay, it's not that bad here, I'm just hoping that maybe once it warms up, I'll be able to get my summer tan on. Get some good hikes, mountain bike rides and maybe go swimming again.

I'm sure anybody who reads this, the few, if any of you that are out there have noticed it's been months since I last posted on either this or my motorsports blog. To address that, I finally stopped caring about what other people were doing and decided that school was going to take a bigger priority than my blogs; particularly Off The Apex. Now that summer is over, I've got a few projects that I want to accomplish as well as a few things that I want to let loose via the internetz.

A lot has happened since I last posted anything anywhere: I've successfully completed another semester of college and I think I've managed to change a lot of the things about myself which had prior gone unaddressed.

For example, I managed to do better in school the last two semester than I have ever. To be honest, it's a great feeling: probably one of the best I've ever had. The feeling of a reward that is no greater than a simple alphabet character on some arbitrary piece of digital paper has far too much power when you have invested nothing but countless months of hard work, tears, and sleepless nights to the cause. It's far too mundane that it is all equivalent to a piece of paper that in ten, maybe even five years from now, will have practically no value. The thought that once I get my first job and prove my worth via work ethic and intelligence, these four, or five or six, or however many year I have devoted will be nothing but a smudge in my personal history.

Still, I can't say that I have ever felt better. Even more so because there have been certain classes which have been huge obstacles to me in the past which I have finally hurdled over. I'm not sure why it was: that I have performed so much better here than I ever did when I went to school down in Arizona. Perhaps it is because here, I share so much more in school pride? Maybe that I feel more comfortable here knowing that I'm not surrounded by rich, spoiled, pampered kids? Or even that I just don't feel like a dumbass here. In any case, the feeling that it is to be part of something huge, part of a awesome school which people have actually heard of and respect is something I took for granted before. The bottom is, I love this place. It's an interesting contrast going from a school where I didn't really care about who I was and what I was doing to beyond incredibly proud and confident of my school and who I am and what I'm doing. When people ask me where I go, I don't think I could get more satisfaction than from saying "Utah State Engineering". It's one of the best things ever.

Now it's summer though. So they say at least. When I look outside and it's 50 degrees, snow on the mountain outside of my window, and cloudy and overcast, I'm not exactly convinced. Seriously: it's effing June tomorrow.

Obviously I've been spending quite a bit of time now submerged in the Utah culture and the LDS religion. Nearly all of my friends are LDS, and are even strict followers. Prior to living here though, I held little respect for Mormons, this is mostly partly because of the way the Mormons I grew up around acted, partly because of my own personal beliefs, and fully due to my personal ignorance.

One thing I've always truly believed is the thought that you cannot judge a book by it's cover.I earnestly believe you can't judge or believe in something until you have good reason to via experience or research and so forth. Along those same lines, you can't claim knowledge without knowing the subject. Sadly though, I've realized that thats how I have lived when it comes to the Mormons.

With that, I've been spending a lot of time speaking with Mormons and non-Mormons alike and I've decided that I'm going to go through and read various religious testaments including but not limited to the Book of Mormon. With that, I'm hoping that I'll be able to get an "outside looking in" view without other influences: neither negative nor positive, this purely my own personal quest of understanding. Don't take this as me signing up to a different church, it's just a journey of knowledge. I'm hoping to read a little bit every night, and write about it on here. That's my daily devotion and I hope it works out. Hopefully I'll have it done by the end of the summer.

So buckle up and get ready, this should be fun.