Reflections of a True Millennial

As I was trying to fall asleep yesterday, I really began to think about how everything that happened in the day was an example of frienship.      It started like most other days, with me waking up later than I was supposed to. I went off to school to help in the Engineering Lab with our own lower school Lego Robotics Competition. It was really a lot of fun. I have been mentoring two sixth graders for the past few weeks in building and programming their robot, and they performed extremely well.      After I left, I had to swing by a Norwegian store to pick up some Swedish supplies for Christmas cooking and stuff. While I was there, I met a kid who is in my grade at my school. I'd never met him before, and it was nice.      Then I went home and sat in my living room for 3 hours to watch the MLS Cup Final. Hopefully you all know that is a soccer game. It was Real Salt Lake (my favorite team) vs. Sporting Kansas City. With my jersey on, I was...

Hello again. So, Sunday is officially my (hopefully) regular day of writing a blog post, now that I've gotten back to writing. These weekly posts could be about anything, as always, but hopefully include something about my week and what I gained from it, while at the same time refraining from being a "journal." Basically this paragraph just told you what everything has already been like anyway on the blog. Oh well, read on. This post will probably sound contradictory from what I wrote last week, but that's okay. It's not! On Wednesday, I wrote about real intent. A nice term, surely, and hopefully something you can/will apply to your life because it can/will help your life. But, what's the limit of real intent? What's the line between work and play? Can we have real intent in both?  In addition to having real intent in life for all our responsibilities, we also must have real intent in our relaxation. Well that just sounds stressful. Why would you int...

I'm still alive and this blog hasn't quite sunk into the depths of the internet, wasting away without any updates. I've actually intended to write for the past few months (in which I hadn't), but habit takes over. Funny how that works. Life has changed a lot. The lazy days of summer gave way to another rigorous school year (as they always do), but this year is different from the rest. Senior year. Our focus begins to shift out of high school and into the future. College applications pile up, counselors frequently visit with all the students, and we're given one last primer on the in's and out's of college before we apply to, accept, and attend a college. With all this, our intentions grow. In life we all intend mostly good things- for ourselves and others. I intend to go to a nice college with a grand scholarship. I intend to get A's in all my classes. I intend to spend more time with my family, etc. It often seems that we are spread so thin among all...

So, I guess my intended schedule of posting hasn't really worked out. I can't provide a great excuse, since mostly I'm just lazy. But in the past few weeks I actually have been doing some pretty great things that I think are worthy of detracting from my writing. This past week was probably the best week of my life. In January, I decided that it would be a great idea to go to EFY this summer. Especially for Youth (EFY) is a week long camp held all over the country for Mormon teens to strengthen their commitment to God and the Gospel, while also having fun and meeting new people. It's a pretty awesome program. But, upon deciding EFY would be a fun thing to do for the summer, I discovered early registration had ended and getting a spot would be difficult. When I first checked for open slots during regular registration, everything in this session was booked. But somehow, we logged on at a later time when a slot had opened up. We quickly signed up for EFY Provo session 7...

Well, I must be getting good when a friend (who's ten times smarter than myself) approaches me for a motivational blog post.  So yes, I just wrote about summer and I myself have completed all studying for the entire school year (finally), but some less fortunate, including said friend, have exams still to come. Therefore, more studying. Darn. So, yeah I'm about to write about studying. But, stay with me, it'll get better. This whole year, I've told myself that school wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to study. There's homework and then there's studying. Homework is easy enough to complete by doing a few problems or some project. But studying just kills your brain. I think maybe it's the amount of personal initiative that studying requires which carries its' difficulty. You can't just do every odd question on page 112, you have to sit down and review and read and whatever. Blah. But, life is not all about studying. And this blog i...

For a special series coming soon. --- So yes, I am a Mormon. You've probably seen those ads on Youtube with cheery people saying things like "I write a blog, I want to be an engineer, and I'm a Mormon." Well maybe those Youtube ads have better stories than I do. Or perhaps you've had those guys in white shirts and ties with name tags knock on your door. And more likely than not if you're reading this, you know me (a Mormon). So, you've had some exposure to Mormonism, but really, what is a Mormon? What do we believe?  The name "Mormon" is actually a nickname for this misconceived Church. The official name is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." Quite a mouthful to say, so often it is abbreviated as the LDS (Latter-Day Saint) Church, or referred to as the Mormon church. The term Mormon comes from "The Book of Mormon," which is a book of Scripture  recording the teachings and history of a group of Israelites th...

     Thursday was really the last day of Junior year. It kind of snuck up on me. Most years, it's a big countdown- 20 days left, 19 days left, 18 days left, .... - but this year it kind of just happened. Even waking up this morning, it didn't feel like the last day of school. And even now it doesn't. It's been such a long, rigorous year and I feel like it's all just continuing on tomorrow and next week. But we're actually done.      The first day of this year was kind of odd, just like today. There wasn't a lot of fanfare. From the first hour of the day when Mrs. Gregor laid out the lesson plans for the next few weeks (with more assignments and quizzes than imaginable) till the closing bell in Calculus, it was a daunting day. I feel like "first days" in high school have never gone too well for me. I'm always a little introverted, forced out of the comfort of summer into new classes with new teachers, assignments, and different classmates, w...

And so it begins. The Seniors are gone, graduated, off to bigger things. Cue the slogans spelled with numbers (stay c14ssy, etc.). Schedule your senior pictures. Start applying to colleges. It's all happening. Maybe I'm a bit prideful to be writing about the beginning of the class of 2014, when all the graduating seniors today probably have unexplainable feelings of anticipation and unknown. Today's really their day, their commencement. Congratulations to all the seniors who are moving on. You will all certainly be missed. That's life. Change is inevitable in any situation. As anticipation fills the outgoing class, excitement enters the new upperclassmen, fear strikes incoming juniors, and a myriad of feelings occur. Change is inevitable. We get so ingrained in our repetitive ways of life, that change is difficult to deal with. But every change brings a new beginning, whether it be a new grade, school, job, family, friendship, or anything. Change brings opportunit...

     With any thing in life, there are two ways to do something: in theory and in application. Theory basically means practice, when you study, prepare, and work for something. Application is when practice is put to the test. In theory, everything works. It application, it's much different. Things happen, mistakes occur, and life doesn't always work. The leap to application seems broad, often too broad for us to hurdle. But the definitive factor that separates the truly successful from the rest is application. In theory, you can accomplish anything. In application, you can learn anything. Application is not a means of perfection, but it's a means of working towards perfection. Great inventor Thomas Edison struggled to make the light bulb at first, failing hundreds of times. When asked about these failures, he replied: I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways t...

     Faced daily with differing paths and decisions, we mold our character and disposition through the choices we make. We facilitate each option through two means- commission or omission. Specifically each wrong decision we make can come by commission or omission.      The concept is fairly obvious and probably what you think about concerning choices. Commission is what you do. So if you do something, you've committed something- whether it be good or bad. What we often don't think about when it comes to choice is omission. Omission is what we choose not to do. Even though the concept of omission isn't obvious to our minds, it's often how we choose to do wrong.  We all know the sins of commission, and we're not likely to commit a serious wrong such as killing someone, it's probably just not going to happen. But, when things become hard it becomes so easy for us to omit the things that matter most. What we need to do quickly turns into what we should...

     Every six months, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormons) holds a General Conference broadcast to all members teaching basic doctrine from the Prophet and other leaders. Over 100,000 people attend the two-day event live in Salt Lake City, Utah while it is broadcasted over satellite connections, TV, and internet to 175 countries in 94 languages then later distributed across the world in print, video, and audio forms. Basically, General Conference is a giant meeting of the Mormon Church. The 183rd Annual General Conference occurred this weekend, with 27 different speakers with varying messages.      The messages of General Conference are basically modern Scripture to the LDS Church. Speakers are not assigned topics, but ponder what needs to be heard and prepare talks to give.      One of my favorite talks from this weekend was given by Dieter F. Uchtdorf, a retired German pilot, who serves as the 2nd ...

So this past weekend was our final robotics competition of the season in Ft. Lauderdale. Long story short, we lost. Yes, we were the only team the entire weekend to climb to the top of the pyramid (and consistently for that matter), we brought home the Excellence in Engineering award for our "King Kong-like" climbing mechanism, we remained the only alliance the entire weekend to bring down last year's world champions, we ranked 9th out of 46, and we captained our own alliance heading into the elimination rounds. Yes, this was our best season ever. But, our goal was to make it to the championships in St. Louis and we came up a bit short. No matter the cause (ahem, string) we failed to win it all. And early today, I wrote a depressed little entry about this, but decided to hold it off. Often times, we seem to be surrounded by those who aim high and seem to always achieve their goals, often landing even higher. It's discouraging to fall short of things that you...

Oh, hey there. So, yeah I haven't written for a while! Life's busy after all, but life's good too. A lot has happened in the past few months! For starters, the blog was featured in the January issue of the Patriot Post: Woo hoo, publicity! But I probably proceeded to kill that publicity by not writing for two months. A lot of the times, life gets in the way. My most recent post is describing the busy time I will have doing robotics. Well, it was a busy time indeed. After six weeks of long days after school and on weekends, we successfully made out robot. Indeed, it is something to be proud of. We compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition and went to the Orlando regional two weeks ago. It was an awesome experience, as always, and our team came out ranked 7th out of 61 teams, giving us the highest position we have ever gotten. We got picked for the 4th-seeded alliance, but unfortunately lost in the quater-finals. Watch us in the following matches at  https://www....

So welcome to the portion of the year where I act most like a nerd. Yeah, it's robotics season!  When I spend free time looking up other robots, and I'm at school so much that conversations go like this: "Hey want to hang out tomorrow?" "Sorry, I have to go to school." "But, it's Saturday..." "Well, yeah I have robotics." So, moral of the story: I'm lame.  But, you already knew that! Before you close the page, don't worry I'm not going to wax poetic about robots in this post. So keep reading! Being at school late everyday is challenging and tiring, but it's fun. I enjoy doing the things I do, even though they take up time. Time is limited, and with our time we can do things that we enjoy and things that we do not enjoy. Finding a balance between these two opposites is difficult. For example, you most likely do not enjoy all of your classes at school, but the knowledge and benefit they give you ca...

     Time is one of the few things that we have no ability to ever take back. There can be no way to rescind what you have done in the last second, minute, day, hour, year, or lifetime. With the abundance of blessings in the form of technological advancements and other devices designed to save you time, you think we would all do our best to live each moment of our days to the fullest. However, we squander our time in ways that bring no lasting blessings or happiness. Fear or laziness compel us to stick within our own sphere and not venture out into new territories. "Maybe I would do that, but I don't know how to." "Maybe I would do that but I don't have time." "For all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"      - John Greenleaf Wittier       Too often we live beneath our capacity in our day to day lives. Many of the things we accomplish on a daily basis add nothing to our lives for good. If thos...

I meant to post this a while ago, but got lazy. So pretend it's 2012 again... ----------------- "Look not behind thee." Genesis 19:17      In less than two days the new year will come.      A time of hope, a time of change, a time of renewal.      But in the world today, hope seems like a far off concept sometimes, a foreign feeling that exists not in our own hearts or homes. Everyday it seems that more and more tragic stories are heard while looming economic cliffs and other national crises hang near. Cries are heard in every direction for gun control, economic regulation, and other measures of the sort. The words of the hymn "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow echo fittingly: And in despair I bowed my head "There is no peace on earth," I said, "For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men."      And so it seems that in the world today there is a ...