This week I have thought a lot about my BYU experience. The realization hit me that I will be graduating and moving on to another chapter in life, and that thought seems surreal. Because I have been at BYU for five years (with a 2 year mission break), I am just so used to it being pretty much my whole life that the thought of my time here being up feels strange. I am the kind of person that loves to get into grooves and routines, not strict routines but general patterns of life. Whenever there is a major change, like graduation, I feel nervous but excited at the same time. I know that I will be going to dental school after graduating, but I also know my daily life will be different. Different because there is only one BYU, and one BYU experience. If I had to say what the best thing about BYU is, I would say it is the teachers. The general student body has a lot to do with my experience, but because the bulk of my on-campus time has been spent in lecture and lab, the teachers have made the greatest impressions and not only taught me the lesson material, but also important life lessons. The funny thing is that I don't think I could ever list those things out, but I know they are there because of the way I have changed. The greatest change has come in my process of thought, and that is what I am most grateful for. Many professors throughout the years have pushed us students to think for ourselves and use logic, deductive techniques, and always ask ourselves if something is concurrent with what we know to be true. And I love most of all the simple things in the classes that help guide me towards the gospel, such as the prayers in class, the continual references to Jesus Christ and the plan of salvation, and most importantly the spirit that each professor has brought to the class with their sincere desire to help us students gain not only temporal knowledge, but spiritual knowledge. I wish I could always be here at BYU, but the lessons I have learned and the feeling that have come will never leave, and I can feel how I have become a better person because of this BYU experience.

In order to celebrate and reflect upon the resurrection of Christ on this Easter Sunday, the Elders and Relief Society each had lessons focused on this subject. My wife and I separated at the end of Sunday School into our respective classes, prepared to talk and ponder more on the Savior and the Atonement. What happened in the following hour exemplified the difference between the Relief Society and Elders Quorum. My wife told me that in her class the teacher took them through all the New Testament scriptures detailing the death and resurrection of Christ, and how this has impacted the lives of every person. Multiple women shared their experiences of how the atonement has changed their lives and the lives of their family members in extraordinary ways. The women were filled with the Spirit and a few tears were shed. In contrast, as the lesson began in Elders quorum, a large flat screen TV was wheeled in and the teacher hooked up his iPad. For the next hour we watched the new short films produced by the LDS church. The movies were pretty good, although I enjoy the older ones a bit more. At the end of church, my wife and I shared what we had learned. We had a laugh at the difference in lessons.

I highly enjoy General Conference, but even though I pay attention and take occasional notes, I have trouble recalling specifics from the various talks. I can speak generally about what was said, but I think the hard part is that there are so many amazing talks one right after another that I don't have time to digest the messages and ponder how I will implement the teachings into my life. This is why I am thankful that the church publishes the talks, so that I can review them and study each one in depth. However, reviewing the notes I took during the broadcast and comparing them to the printed talks is always interesting because sometimes the things I have written down have nothing to do with what the person was talking about. The discrepancies let me know that I wasn't just writing down the exact words of the speaker, but writing the thoughts and impressions the Spirit brings to my mind. During the Sunday morning session, I had a random thought and just daydreamed about it for a bit subconsciously while watching the speaker, and the thought was a really good one that helped me out a bit, but when I snapped out of it, I had pretty much missed the whole talk. I think doing this is ok because the Spirit is the one that is supposed to teach us and bring the message to our heart and mind.

Tonight Shannon and I went to her co-worker's, Ming-Tzong, house for a nice Sunday dinner. Her children were there, who are all around the same age as Shannon and I. One of her sons works for BYU police as well as city police in Sandy, and man he had some good stories. Just a word to the wise, don't pick your nose or do anything else on campus that may be embarrassing even if you don't think anyone is looking, because there are thousands of cameras inside and out. The campus police save all the funny tidbits for later. Anyways, after dinner he gave everyone a little self-defense training and gave Shannon and I a can of pepper spray as well as a kubotan, which is a small self-defense weapon keychain for close-quarters. He gave us some good training on how to use it if we are attacked, but in all reality I question its effectiveness. I realize that having and using it is a lot better than nothing at all, but I can think of something else that is a lot better (a concealed gun). I am glad Shannon has this stuff, but I think for it to be effective in actual practice you need quite a bit more training and strength to fend off an attack.

Friday night started out relatively boring, mainly due to the fact that my wife took me to her brother's high school cheerleading exhibition. I myself would never bother choose to be a male cheerleader, but my wife and I support her brother, Joel, in his endeavors. The exhibition played out as normal, a few cheer routines from the cheer squad, a couple of risque sexual-themed dances from the drill teams. You know, the usual. But at the end of the last routine where Joel was catching one of the flyer girls, he got nailed in the face by the girl's elbow as she came down. His head was knocked back violently but he played it cool by cupping his nose and causally walking off the mat. But I knew something was up, judging by the impact. My wife and I jogged over to him and saw that his cupped hands were filled to the brim with blood and his nose was gushing blood from both inside and out. After cleaning up the mess and stemming the blood flow as much as possible, we went back to his house for a checking with his parents, then off to the hospital. When the X-ray came back, the doctor stated that "this the the most broken nose I have ever seen!" His nose bone was completely sheered off and pushed back a good amount. This was quite interesting, and after the swelling started to increase he looked like Lord Voldemort. We all got a good laugh at that. The break was so bad that the doctor dared not set it and referred him to a specialist, who he will see on Monday. Exciting night!

I took the big plunge this week and signed the next 8 years of my life away to the Army. As described in many of my past entries, I have been in somewhat of a pickle because the Army had offered me the scholarship but I was waiting to hear back from the Air Force as to whether or not I received their scholarship. I couldn't just wait forever to hear back because the Army has a 2-week decision period, and if you do accept or reject by the end of that 2- week period, the scholarship is automatically revoked. So on Friday the 2nd, I had to make the choice to either accept the Army scholarship, or reject it and bank on getting the Air Force scholarship. In essence, that was a $500,000 bet. I decided to play it safe, so I signed with the Army. Even though I would have rather gone with the Air Force, the Army is basically the same only without the Air Force culture (which is a little bit more laid back and relaxed). And to be honest, I am not sure I would want to be part of an organization that never meets its deadlines. The notification deadline for the Air Force scholarship was February 17, and they have yet to release anything. The Army, on the other hand, met their deadline. I like it when people/organizations actually do what they say they are going to do. So now I am in the Army!

Woodturning is one of my favorite hobbies right now, mainly because I am fascinated by wood with all its various colors and grains. I have mainly focused on making pens, tops, and small trinkets, but on Saturday I decided to take a step up in the woodturning world and make a bowl. It may sound like a simple project, but you must consider that the small bowl must come from a rather large cross-section on timber. What makes the wood harder to turn is that the center of the rough piece is not always the desired center of the bowl. In order to do this, you must mount the wood where the center of the bowl will be between the lathe centers. When you do this, the wood is uneven around the centers, causing wobbles and an uneven cutting surface. And so, when you try to use a gouge to plain the wood into a perfect circle, the uneven sides present quite a problem. This was my experience on Saturday, and at times I thought I would loose a finger or an eye, and the wobbling of the uneven wood even caused my lathe to jump around a bit. But after a few scares and a lot of patience, I successfully completed my first bowl. I put a nice varnish finish on it and now the bowl sits next to the front door and is our key bowl.