Girl in Transition

A few weeks ago a handful my favorite students graduated. I taught a couple of these kids all three years of their high school careers and I marvel at how much I’ve seen them grow.

As they marched passed me at graduation and we exchanged smiles, I speculated about what’s in store for them over the next 15 years. I wondered what type of women they would become. Would life serve them the traditional serving of college, marriage, and motherhood? What does fate have in store for them, and how will their best laid plans turn out, or not.

And then I realized I don’t have to worry. They would decide who they would become. Emerson said:

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

And it’s true! Life may deal us hand after hand after hand of experiences we didn’t anticipate, but ultimately, it is up to each one of us to determine who we will become within those parameters. I can choose to be happy, intelligent, healthy, whatever I want to be--who the core of me will be.

I have been thinking about this a lot over the last few weeks and have been carrying on an inner-dialogue. If I can decide who I am destined to become, who do I want to be? What kind of woman do I still want to work on becoming? I first have to think about the things I don’t have control over changing and then think about the rest.

David O. McKay has said, “You can change human nature. No man who has felt in him the Spirit of Christ even for a half a minute can deny this truth…You do change human nature, your own human nature, if you surrender it to Christ.”

I can have my very nature changed!

And just who is this mysterious woman I am destined to become? I don’t know--I’m still working on her.

People Are Talking

I woke up this morning to this e-mail in my in-box, and I'm just goint to admit it totally made my day, maybe even my week:

"Hey! I thought I'd just shoot you a note. I was in a board meeting for the McKay School of Education Alumni Board today since I do PR for the school, and I was just chatting with a few people there. We got to talking about how I went to Payson, and they said oh, the English department there is just great, we talked about that for a while, then it got around to me being involved in newspaper and the women there just had glowing things to say. One, whose name totally escapes me, said something along the lines of she (aka you) is so great because she practices what she preaches. She teaches, she gets published, and she cares about her students. Anyway, I, of course, echoed those sentiments and added a few of my own, but I wanted to just let you know that we were talking about you!"

---Former Student