Lifetime of Learning

I have a few confessions to make.
1) I love school.
2) I still miss school.
3) I graduated from college twice so I could a) keep going to school b) teach school in my free time.
4) Staying home with my children, I've found a number of methods of learning that help feed my brain.*
5) I know I'm a nerd.
6) I'm okay with that.

*Podcasts, free downloads from official sites, and iPods in general have changed my approach to learning drastically. I am hooked to devotionals, forums, talks on my iPod, as well as podcasts of classic speeches from the prophets, and podcasts from some favorite NPR shows (e.g. Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, This American Life, Fresh Air, Car Talk). These are the things I listen to when I'm exercising, walking the kids to the park, making dinner, etc.



On that note, I have GOT to share a couple sweet websites, and my favorite talk from this week.

BYU speeches (click on the name and it'll take you, or add to bookmarks: speeches.byu.edu)

You Can Do This - An Approach to Raising Wonderful Children (click, or add to your bookmarks: education.byu.edu/youcandothis)

Check 'em out; see what you think.



Finally, the talk that keeps running through my brain:

Bottles and Books

Sterling W. Sill was a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when this fireside
address was given at Brigham Young University on 1 May 1977.

a few excerpts that I especially liked:

"On many occasions I have heard President David O. McKay refer to Ralph Waldo Emerson as the greatest thinker that America has ever produced. And what a thrilling possibility it is that I can run through my little weak brain every idea, so far as it has been recorded, that was ever run through the brain of the greatest thinker that America has ever produced! I can also run through my mind the greatest moral and cultural stimulants from the prophets, the statesmen, the poets, the playwrights, and the philosophers. "

"William James, the great Harvard psychologist, once asked this question: "How would you like to create your own mind?" And isn't that exactly what each of us does? Professor James said the mind is made up by what it feeds upon. He said the mind, like the dyer's hand, is colored by what it holds. If I hold in my hand a spongeful of purple dye, my hand becomes purple. But if I hold in my mind great ideas of righteousness and faith and devotion to God, my whole personality is colored accordingly."

"Victor Hugo once said that the most powerful thing in the world is an idea whose time has come, and an idea's time comes when we are able to get a harness on it so that we can get it to work for us, doing those things that we most want it to do...when in my reading I come to some little nugget of an idea that sends a chill up and down my backbone and gives me an ambition to do something important, I take that out and put it in my idea bank, and then when I have time I memorize it. "

"In 1943, I heard Adam S. Bennion give a talk on the value of great literature. He tried to get us to form the habit of appraising and doing something about becoming familiar with great human thought. You can sell the idea of the value of being familiar with great ideas to anybody, but most people lose their share of the benefit by saying, "I don't have time to read." We have time for everything else, but we do not have time to read; and as a consequence, we are pretty well forgetting how to read effectively. But Dr. Bennion tried to get around this idea by saying: "Suppose that you didn't have anything to do but read." And inasmuch as we were then nearing the end of the Second World War he said, "Suppose that you were going to be a prisoner in a Japanese concentration camp for the next four years, and suppose that you would be allowed to take into the concentration camp with you the complete works of any ten authors. Which would you take, and what would you expect to get out of them?""