As I was listening for sarcasm, I was surprised that I found very little of it. I know it's there, I remember hearing way too much of it in High School, but no matter how much I listened here, I didn't hear very much. Now, this could mean one of three things:
1. People are more mature in college, especially this college, and don't use sarcasm as much. I initially believed this, and though it probably does play a part, I talked to others who were able to hear many examples of sarcasm, even here. So that isn't it.
2. I wasn't listening hard enough. This is also very likely, and plays a part. I haven't been getting out much, so I might not have been in situations where I would hear sarcasm. I could also be hanging out with people who don't use sarcasm, or we might have been in situations where sarcasm wasn't warranted. I don't think this is the main reason, though.
3. I can't hear or understand sarcasm when I do hear it. I think this is at least partly true, if not mostly true. I've had trouble recognizing sarcasm when it is used around me. It caused many uncomfortable situations in high school (you can use your imagination as to how). I don't know if it's a good thing I can't understand sarcasm as easily as others seem to, or if it's going to get me into real trouble someday. It already has gotten me into difficult situations when I used it unknowingly.
The above reason are maybe why the assignment to listen for sarcasm was hard for me. I felt like I wouldn't have anything to write about in this blog. Basically, I take what people say at face-value, and I maybe trust them a little too much. I don't think these are bad things, but there are certain situations where they can be undesirable traits.
So basically, I need to work on reading people.
That isn't what I really want to write this blog on, though. I want to discuss sarcasm in another area of life that may be even worse: our spiritual relationship with God.
As I said above, I don't understand sarcasm, so I looked up "sarcasm" on LDS.org and came up with 66 entries. I didn't have to go very far before I had an epiphany, though, for in the first summary paragraph of the first entry, it said,
"A most damaging form of humor is sarcasm, or cutting, hostile, or contemptuous remarks. Though often meant to be harmless, sarcasm denotes insensitivity to the feelings of others, stemming either from thoughtlessness or maliciousness."
-Peter B Rawlins, New Era, August 1974
The first sentence makes sense, I've heard it every time there's a talk or article about sarcasm. But the second sentence struck a chord within me. "Though often meant to be harmless, sarcasm denotes insensitivity to the feelings of others, stemming either from thoughtlessness or maliciousness." I'll come back to this thought in a minute.
The other thing that helped me get to this epiphany was the song I was listening to when I did my search: I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go. As I thought about the message in this song, and the second half of the definition of sarcasm, it hit me: how many times do we use sarcasm in our prayers, or in our church callings. How many times do we say "I'll do what you want" and think "but it's not what I would do" or "I'll do it my way". Isn't that a form of sarcasm? We say or think a remark meant to be harmless, as a "side note", that in reality hurts someone else's feelings, because they feel that you are being demeaning. In the example, it's God's feelings we are hurting. How do you think He feels when we say we'll do what He wants, but then we turn around and ignore His counsel? I don't think we mean to be malicious to God, but what do we convey to Him in the thoughtless remarks we make in the recesses of our minds?
When we are told to do something, we need to respond sincerely with a "sure, I'll do what you need" instead of a sarcastic "sure, I'll do that, whatever". I think Satan really wants us to slip in thoughtless remarks to God to hurt our relationship with Him. Isn't that Satan's ultimate goal: separate us from our Father? What better way than to get us to do it ourselves?
So, what's the cure to this? I believe that it just takes practice. We must practice praying in order to understand God's will, and not try to force our will on Him, and then we must practice recognizing and acting on the suggestions/instructions God sends us. Honestly, how many times have the prophet and apostles told us this same principle in the last three years? Even within the past two weeks, we've heard it at least three times from three different apostles.
I challenge each of us, myself included, to stop using sarcasm in our relationships, especially our relationship with God. Just ask, is Eternal Life worth a sarcastic remark?
Monday, September 20, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
2. Footprints in the Sand
This post is an explanation, both of the title of the Blog and of the URL, sandyfootprints.
First, the title.
"The only way out is through." This is a quote I heard somewhere, I don't remember where. I searched for it on the Internet, and came up with about 15 different people who said it, including J.K. Rowling, Robert Frost, and an obscure poet named Akka Mahadevi. To me, it doesn't matter who said it, it's still an inspiring quote. When I heard it, it was used in reference to life and our trials. So often in today's world we search for ways to avoid the difficult things. We have TV remotes so we don't have to leave the couch, pizza and popcorn buttons on the microwave so we don't have to hit three extra buttons, Internet quick links and favorites bars so we don't have to type in a URL, the list is endless. Unfortunately, we also take this philosophy into our Spiritual lives. One complaint I've heard about the Gospel is that it's so hard to keep our standards. Televangelists don't make money unless they sprout ideas like "Proclaim Jesus your Savior, and you'll be saved, no matter what" and even the Catholic Church did something where you could buy repentance instead of actually doing the work. (These were indulgences, and are no longer in use. They were used during the Middle Ages) The point is, even in our Spiritual life, we want to take shortcuts. I've wanted to sometimes; I've wanted to just read the scriptures instead of studying them, or I want just go to an hour of church instead of three. That's why I like this quote: it says there are no shortcuts when it comes to trials. The only way to get out of trials is to go through them. If you dodge them, they come back later, oftentimes worse. This quote gives me the courage to face my trials head-on and remember that there is an end, I just have to endure.
Next: the URL.
My favorite poem is "Footprints in the Sand" by Mary Stevenson. I first heard it during a Church talk a few years ago, and it's struck me. That was at a time in my life when I was struggling to feel my Savior's love for me, so this poem really hit as a reminder that God is always there. Here is the poem:
Footprints in the Sand
One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there were one set of footprints.
This bothered me because I noticed
that during the low periods of my life,
when I was suffering from
anguish, sorrow or defeat,
I could see only one set of footprints.
So I said to the Lord,
"You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during
the most trying periods of my life
there have only been one
set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most,
you have not been there for me?"
The Lord replied,
"The times when you have
seen only one set of footprints,
is when I carried you."
Mary Stevenson
Copyright © 1984 Mary Stevenson, from original 1936 text, All rights reserved
http://www.footprints-inthe-sand.com/index.php?page=Poem/Poem.php
This poem gave voice to my feelings of loneliness and abandonment. It then told me I was being stupid. I had forgotten who I was, a Daughter of God, and just as my mortal father is always there for me, so is my Heavenly Father always there for me. This poem helped me realize that it wasn't my Father in Heaven who had forsaken me, but I who had left His side, through my own choices. It helped me start recognizing His hand in my life and helped me feel His love again.
This quote and poem are from a time in my life when I felt lost, alone, forsaken, and like I would never see the end of the tunnel I was in. They helped me through the tunnel, and now I use them all throughout my life, including on a blog for a freshman writing class.
First, the title.
"The only way out is through." This is a quote I heard somewhere, I don't remember where. I searched for it on the Internet, and came up with about 15 different people who said it, including J.K. Rowling, Robert Frost, and an obscure poet named Akka Mahadevi. To me, it doesn't matter who said it, it's still an inspiring quote. When I heard it, it was used in reference to life and our trials. So often in today's world we search for ways to avoid the difficult things. We have TV remotes so we don't have to leave the couch, pizza and popcorn buttons on the microwave so we don't have to hit three extra buttons, Internet quick links and favorites bars so we don't have to type in a URL, the list is endless. Unfortunately, we also take this philosophy into our Spiritual lives. One complaint I've heard about the Gospel is that it's so hard to keep our standards. Televangelists don't make money unless they sprout ideas like "Proclaim Jesus your Savior, and you'll be saved, no matter what" and even the Catholic Church did something where you could buy repentance instead of actually doing the work. (These were indulgences, and are no longer in use. They were used during the Middle Ages) The point is, even in our Spiritual life, we want to take shortcuts. I've wanted to sometimes; I've wanted to just read the scriptures instead of studying them, or I want just go to an hour of church instead of three. That's why I like this quote: it says there are no shortcuts when it comes to trials. The only way to get out of trials is to go through them. If you dodge them, they come back later, oftentimes worse. This quote gives me the courage to face my trials head-on and remember that there is an end, I just have to endure.
Next: the URL.
My favorite poem is "Footprints in the Sand" by Mary Stevenson. I first heard it during a Church talk a few years ago, and it's struck me. That was at a time in my life when I was struggling to feel my Savior's love for me, so this poem really hit as a reminder that God is always there. Here is the poem:
Footprints in the Sand
One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there were one set of footprints.
This bothered me because I noticed
that during the low periods of my life,
when I was suffering from
anguish, sorrow or defeat,
I could see only one set of footprints.
So I said to the Lord,
"You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during
the most trying periods of my life
there have only been one
set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most,
you have not been there for me?"
The Lord replied,
"The times when you have
seen only one set of footprints,
is when I carried you."
Mary Stevenson
Copyright © 1984 Mary Stevenson, from original 1936 text, All rights reserved
http://www.footprints-inthe-sand.com/index.php?page=Poem/Poem.php
This poem gave voice to my feelings of loneliness and abandonment. It then told me I was being stupid. I had forgotten who I was, a Daughter of God, and just as my mortal father is always there for me, so is my Heavenly Father always there for me. This poem helped me realize that it wasn't my Father in Heaven who had forsaken me, but I who had left His side, through my own choices. It helped me start recognizing His hand in my life and helped me feel His love again.
This quote and poem are from a time in my life when I felt lost, alone, forsaken, and like I would never see the end of the tunnel I was in. They helped me through the tunnel, and now I use them all throughout my life, including on a blog for a freshman writing class.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
1. Learning Now in Preparation for the Future
"Child of God" by President Eyring of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was a talk given at Brigham Young University about what makes us great learners. He detailed four attributes that all great learners possess: they welcome correction, keep commitments, help other people, and expect resistance and overcome it. I thoroughly enjoyed reading his talk, and these characteristics are going to become part of my soul, but I also enjoyed getting advice for my future position: a teacher.
I plan on becoming a teacher when I finish college. In Pres. Eyring's talk, he told us the four main attributes that great learners have, and so he told me what attributes I should try to get my future students to develop.
Welcome Correction: Great learners welcome correction. Pres. Eyring says "the wise learner cares more for the jottings than for the grade at the top of the page." I had a teacher once who ran her class this way: you could rewrite any paper as many times as you wanted. In this way, she made us focus more on the corrections and not the grade, since that grade was easily raised. When I run a classroom, I want to follow this same pattern to teach my students that grades don't matter; improving through corrections is what is important.
Keep Commitments: My freshman year of high school, our English motto was "Challenge the System". Pres. Eyring asserts that learning to keep our commitments is important in our respective discipline because each discipline has rules that must be followed. However, he also states that great learners have "a deep appreciation for finding better rules and a commitment to keeping them." So my freshman class motto started me down the path to becoming a great learner as it put into my mind the curiosity and means to challenge the set system and find new and better rules. Keeping my commitments will lead to success in my discipline and it will help me improve my discipline as I keep my commitment to find a better way to do anything. In my own classroom, I will allow my students to challenge the system, including mine, to find ways to improve everything around them.
Work Hard: Great learners work hard. This makes sense; we've known learning takes a lot of work since middle school. Pres. Eyring says that when we quit working, we quit learning. I would liken learning to going up the down escalator. It takes work, and it's much harder than going up the up escalator, but when you get to the top, you feel much more accomplished. Another point that Pres. Eyring draws is that those great learners who always work hard do it for non-academic reasons. Same way with going up the down escalator. If it was a logical argument, that much work is completely illogical. It's illogical to work hard for education, by worldly standards, since you can have pretty good life by dancing through school. Great learners motivate themselves, and they get more out of life since they are engaged. When I am a teacher, I want to teach my students to work hard, but this is one of the hardest things to do. Students do not want to work hard, and pushing them will just make them angry with you. I had a government teacher who got us to work hard. He inspired us to be more than we thought we could. Inspiration is the method teachers use to persuade students to work hard; I want to learn this skill so I can help make great learners.
Expect Resistance and Overcome it: According to most Christian beliefs, and most definitely according to my beliefs, there is opposition in all things. This includes education. Learning is hard, especially if the subject doesn't come naturally to you. Even if something came naturally to you, it is almost certain that you will meet a piece of that subject that is difficult for you to grasp. Great learners expect this, but they are determined to work through the challenges. They have this determination because they know the value of the knowledge that lies on the other side of the hardship. Pres. Eyring counsels us to not get discouraged and to work through whatever comes at us until we overcome it. That is the mark of a great learner: perseverance. I took French in high school. Learning a foreign language is difficult enough, but I also skipped the second year of it. On top of all that, they hired a new teacher to teach the third year, and she was horrible. She was a really nice, interesting person, but she did not know how to teach to our class. She was a by-the-book teacher who was used to having students who were by-the-book learners. My high school was not a by-the-book high school so we all struggled in her class. I considered dropping her class, and then even quiting after the drop date, but my dad told me to keep going. My friends in the class and I started working together to try and learn the information; we persevered. And you know what? All of us passed that class and moved on to fourth year. I even got pretty good at reading French, though my speaking still needs some work. The point is, when we persevered through her class, we came out on the other side with knowledge that was special to us because we had fought hard against the odds to gain it.
This, again, is a difficult trait to teach my students without becoming that teacher that they strongly dislike for the rest of their lives. I don't want to be that teacher, but I do want to teach them perseverance. Luckily, our school system at least partially teaches this concept by requiring tests and papers and finals that many students see as opposition. Opposition is also inherent in ourselves, as we learn what are our strengths and what are our weaknesses. This concept is what I will use to teach my students perseverance. I want to teach math. I'm sure half of you out there just sighed in disgust or spit or something. I'm hoping you did because that means you faced the opposition many, if not most, people find in Math. I plan on helping my students overcome this difficult subject, not by giving them step-by-step instructions for every little problem they encounter, but by giving them general guiding principles that they can apply to math, and anything else that opposes them in life.
President Eyring's talk "Child of God" is food for the thought, but it was also a list of suggestions for me in my future career as a teacher. I hope that you will read this talk and see what it says to you, and what knowledge you gain for your future happiness. Thanks for reading.
I plan on becoming a teacher when I finish college. In Pres. Eyring's talk, he told us the four main attributes that great learners have, and so he told me what attributes I should try to get my future students to develop.
Welcome Correction: Great learners welcome correction. Pres. Eyring says "the wise learner cares more for the jottings than for the grade at the top of the page." I had a teacher once who ran her class this way: you could rewrite any paper as many times as you wanted. In this way, she made us focus more on the corrections and not the grade, since that grade was easily raised. When I run a classroom, I want to follow this same pattern to teach my students that grades don't matter; improving through corrections is what is important.
Keep Commitments: My freshman year of high school, our English motto was "Challenge the System". Pres. Eyring asserts that learning to keep our commitments is important in our respective discipline because each discipline has rules that must be followed. However, he also states that great learners have "a deep appreciation for finding better rules and a commitment to keeping them." So my freshman class motto started me down the path to becoming a great learner as it put into my mind the curiosity and means to challenge the set system and find new and better rules. Keeping my commitments will lead to success in my discipline and it will help me improve my discipline as I keep my commitment to find a better way to do anything. In my own classroom, I will allow my students to challenge the system, including mine, to find ways to improve everything around them.
Work Hard: Great learners work hard. This makes sense; we've known learning takes a lot of work since middle school. Pres. Eyring says that when we quit working, we quit learning. I would liken learning to going up the down escalator. It takes work, and it's much harder than going up the up escalator, but when you get to the top, you feel much more accomplished. Another point that Pres. Eyring draws is that those great learners who always work hard do it for non-academic reasons. Same way with going up the down escalator. If it was a logical argument, that much work is completely illogical. It's illogical to work hard for education, by worldly standards, since you can have pretty good life by dancing through school. Great learners motivate themselves, and they get more out of life since they are engaged. When I am a teacher, I want to teach my students to work hard, but this is one of the hardest things to do. Students do not want to work hard, and pushing them will just make them angry with you. I had a government teacher who got us to work hard. He inspired us to be more than we thought we could. Inspiration is the method teachers use to persuade students to work hard; I want to learn this skill so I can help make great learners.
Expect Resistance and Overcome it: According to most Christian beliefs, and most definitely according to my beliefs, there is opposition in all things. This includes education. Learning is hard, especially if the subject doesn't come naturally to you. Even if something came naturally to you, it is almost certain that you will meet a piece of that subject that is difficult for you to grasp. Great learners expect this, but they are determined to work through the challenges. They have this determination because they know the value of the knowledge that lies on the other side of the hardship. Pres. Eyring counsels us to not get discouraged and to work through whatever comes at us until we overcome it. That is the mark of a great learner: perseverance. I took French in high school. Learning a foreign language is difficult enough, but I also skipped the second year of it. On top of all that, they hired a new teacher to teach the third year, and she was horrible. She was a really nice, interesting person, but she did not know how to teach to our class. She was a by-the-book teacher who was used to having students who were by-the-book learners. My high school was not a by-the-book high school so we all struggled in her class. I considered dropping her class, and then even quiting after the drop date, but my dad told me to keep going. My friends in the class and I started working together to try and learn the information; we persevered. And you know what? All of us passed that class and moved on to fourth year. I even got pretty good at reading French, though my speaking still needs some work. The point is, when we persevered through her class, we came out on the other side with knowledge that was special to us because we had fought hard against the odds to gain it.
This, again, is a difficult trait to teach my students without becoming that teacher that they strongly dislike for the rest of their lives. I don't want to be that teacher, but I do want to teach them perseverance. Luckily, our school system at least partially teaches this concept by requiring tests and papers and finals that many students see as opposition. Opposition is also inherent in ourselves, as we learn what are our strengths and what are our weaknesses. This concept is what I will use to teach my students perseverance. I want to teach math. I'm sure half of you out there just sighed in disgust or spit or something. I'm hoping you did because that means you faced the opposition many, if not most, people find in Math. I plan on helping my students overcome this difficult subject, not by giving them step-by-step instructions for every little problem they encounter, but by giving them general guiding principles that they can apply to math, and anything else that opposes them in life.
President Eyring's talk "Child of God" is food for the thought, but it was also a list of suggestions for me in my future career as a teacher. I hope that you will read this talk and see what it says to you, and what knowledge you gain for your future happiness. Thanks for reading.
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