January 15, 2007

Jenessa Simmons
November 15, 2007
Today was a long day. Just one of those days where you spend all your time thinking of all the things you need to get done, and not enough time doing those things. We didn’t have any fieldtrips today, but we did have two hours of New Testament and one hour of Near Eastern Studies. Usually this lack of pre-scheduled activities would result in most of us spending our afternoon out of the center in our own little groups, but since we have two finals next week most of us spent all day inside. Slightly grumpy.
I don’t know about everyone else, but the highlight of my day was in Near Eastern Studies when Brother Huntington decided to have a class vote. He wanted to know whether we wanted to have both of our finals on Sunday to get them over with, or if we preferred one on Sunday and one on Monday. What was supposed to be a two-minute vote became a 15 minute discussion on which choice was better. Ultimately everyone argued, half the class was super riled up, but I’m pretty sure that no one’s arguing actually changed anyone else’s mind. I love democracy! The vote was in favor of taking the finals on two different days, with the winners taking the lead by only one vote – talk about a close call! I think that Brother Huntington will refrain from ruling by popular opinion in the future.
I spent half of my day floating from place to place trying to find a suitable place to study, where I wouldn’t be distracted by those obnoxious people who just wanted to play, and then I spent the other half of my day alternately succumbing to those people and telling them to study. The thing about those people is that they are the type that seems to be playing all the time, but by the time the test comes around they’ve somehow managed to squeeze 40 hours of studying in, and they blow everyone else out of the water. One thing I love about living here is that it’s easy to observe all the different ways people study, and how stress affects different personalities.
Well, like I mentioned before, we had New Testament today; we just started that class recently. I am so excited for this part of the curriculum! I believe I share the sentiments of many in this program when I say that one of the chief reasons I wanted to come here was so that I could learn more about my Savior in the place where he lived and taught. This is going to be so amazing; we just get to study about him and his gospel every day. I am excited to learn from Brother Ludlow and partake of his wisdom! One of the things I most want to focus on this semester is being able to recognize the Savior’s voice. I want to study his words so that I can identify when I hear the words that he has spoken.