Nothing Like The Real Thing

Despite all the hustle and bustle around me and within, I write this entry with a feeling of calmness right now. As I've sat here for the last little bit relaxing, despite the fact that there are many things that I have to get done before the deadline next Thursday, I've pondered a great many thoughts - many of them gospel oriented.

The first and foremost thought that I've had is that complete lack of reality that Finals have as related to real life. As I consider this position, I am reminded of the scripture that was brought up in Stake Priesthood meeting this last Sunday as well as the overall applicability of it to our lives. In Alma 34:32 we are reminded that "For behold, this life is the time to prepare to meet God, yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors" (Emphasis added). While our experiences as students convince us that cramming is what is necessary to obtain our "academic inheritance" per se, it is not transitional to our lives overall and especially to our eventual meeting with God. We do not have semesters of life that begin and end on exact dates and allow us to know when that ending will occur. We do not have a giant project or a big final exam in which we can cram the night before and stay up all night studying to pass the test in the morning. Instead, our final exam in life, is now and we are given the study guides along the way, as well as the ability to take the exam in a graduated form as opposed to all at once.

We can learn a lot from our experiences as students though. Many of us were fully aware throughout the semester of the deadlines for final projects, even though specific guidelines may not have been given until later on. We are fully aware of the ending date of the semester and that time by which we must submit our work and prove our knowledge in order to obtain that which we desire academically. Yet, many of us have procrastinated our progression to the end and expect to defy certain mortal laws - such as time, physics, and biology, in order to be able to mete out a level of mercy to ourselves to avoid the full consequences of justice that await us for our lack of preparation. President Thomas S. Monson said it best when he said "when the time for performance arrives, the time for preparation has past."

As mortal beings however, we convince ourselves, with the aid of the adversary of course, that we always have a "few more hours" or the time is &still far off" until that point at which we must face our own judgment because of our lack of application to that situation.

Out in the real world, we will not have those things which will require a constant pattern of cramming as we do for Finals. Instead however, we can learn lessons in spite of those things we learn from Finals, and learn to prepare ahead accordingly, so that when the time for our semester lives comes to an end, we are prepared to face our professors and be responsible for the judgment which we bring upon ourselves.

Just my thoughts for the night. I've got a lot more running through my head, but I'll stop there.