Final: My Quests

During this semester I've learned a great deal and my quest has helped motivate me along the path of that learning.

My spiritual quest:
One of my goals in my spiritual quest was so give my spirit and the convictions of my soul a voice. I've always wanted to help give a voice to the voiceless, to make known the story of those who couldn't make their stories known. I feel that before we can give a voice to others we have to find our own and help our hearts speak out just as well as our mind already can. Through my writing this semester I've started to find ways to express my experiences, feelings and beliefs.

My intellectual quest:
Another of my goals was to strengthen my desire to learn. I believe I have begun to accomplish this as well. I've wanted to learn for learning's sake, not just for a grade or for a test. One of the greatest helps to me this semester was writing the David O. McKay essay. I had to learn so much to write it and make it sound good (at least to myself). I had to learn about myself and about each of the things I wrote about. I did research to broaden my mind and enrich the topic. I didn't even use all of the things that I learned in the essay, but they did help to make it better. Learning has continued to strengthen my mind.

I've also wanted to further develop my abilities as a creative writer and increase my capacity to play with language and use it as a tool of expression. Through practice I feel I've also been successful in this goal.

My intellectual quest, and spiritual quest (Cindy Hurst)

My Intellectual Quest

I knew far more as a child than I know now. Thus, I have been reverting to my childhood passions. Back then I was told I was gifted, and somehow I think I became lost as a teenager, attempting to use logic to explain my future.

When I was a young child, all I wanted was to be an artist. However, the adults of my world somehow managed to channel that passion and desire into becoming something more useful. Thus I started college as an engineer, and found the artist in me suffocated, and threatening to bring the rest of me to its grave with it as its last dieing wish. That’s when I first realized the errors in logic learned by the world, and left the University of Utah to come to BYU (another lost childhood desire) to study Industrial Design.

Creating has become my intellectual quest. Industrial design uses very little of the years I dedicated to becoming an engineer in high school and then in college, but I do not regret my decision to become a more artistic creator. It is my passion. Sometime ago I decided that if you are not happy, then do something else.

I do not memorize equations to solve derivatives and integrals. I explore forms, beauty, and simplicity. I do not record and analyze data. I research to discover why people are so willing to work around obvious and often overlooked problems, and attempt to find better solutions. I do not stay up late working on spreadsheets or programming. I pull all-nighters hoping to allow my project to approach perfection just a little closer. I am an Industrial Designer, and I love it.


My Spiritual Quest

At the end of the skiing season last year I decided to get my level 1 certification as a ski instructor. I didn’t expect much from the clinic I was required to attend. Level 1 skiing includes lots of snowplowing, and very basic skiing maneuvers. However, I learned more in that single day of skiing than I did in all of Sunday school as a child. My instructor explained to us this very basic concept:

When you are skiing, there are only three types of movement: movement in the right direction, movement in the wrong direction, and no movement at all. When you are skiing, your goal is to be moving downhill. You must constantly be moving towards that goal as you transition from edge to edge. This is movement in the right direction. Often times we try to sit too far backwards, and are actually hindering our ability to make it to our goal easily. This is movement in the wrong direction. Sometimes we choose no movement at all. This is lazy skiing. When we are not constantly moving towards our goal, we become off balance from the tiny bumps we encounter, and are actually spending more energy than what is necessary to counter our off-balance, which often throws us into the wrong direction.

I’m not sure exactly when it hit me but standing on that mountain that day I felt God speaking to me through my level 1 instructor, telling me that the reason I have fallen multiple times after being so strong in the past, was my lack of constant movement towards Christ. Often times, when I had started feeling good about my level of spirituality, I had chosen to try to maintain that level. However, maintaining is the same thing as no movement at all. It is only when I am constantly trying to be a better person, and come closer to Christ, that I am able to conquer the bumps that I hit throughout my life.