It is a beautiful friday morning and i'm taking time to appreciate everything that makes life wonderful. I have been back from Egypt now for almost a month, and life is very very different. no more roaches, but there IS rain. no more swimming, but there is Gold's gym and mountains to hike and bike on. no more making money, but there is PLENTY of homework.
I'm thoroughly enjoying my master's program in BYU's Marriott School of Management. I'm studying public administration with tentative emphases in nonprofit management (international development) and finance. perfect for me eh?
I decided that I'd dedicate a post to my home of education: Brigham Young University. After completing my undergrad here, I'm back and I want to publicize my love of BYU. :) You know, it's not cool until you're a true veteran haha. I was the same way about Blair, my NJ boarding school. "i'm not a jersey girl!" slowly turned into "i sure miss blair, i'm a jersey girl at heart." If you'd like to take a look at what a new england private school looks like, check it out: http://blair.edu/
Anyway,this post is about BYU, not Blair. I did love BYU towards the end of my undergrad but i never took the time to blog about it. The prophet, Thomas S. Monson came to speak this week at BYU and I got to see and hear him. How many people get that experience eh? Here's a pic of BYU campus:
During my undergrad I spent a lot of my time in the humanities building: Joseph F. Smith building. I think it's the most beautiful building on campus because of the arches and inner plaza. 
These days I spend all my time in the Tanner building, or the business building:
Below is the inner atrium of the Tanner building, also where i spend a lot of time. It has an open glass ceiling, and i loooove light.
Recently I came across something in my management skills book that I wrote down for safe-keeping. Now you get to hear it. It's written about success, by a man who climbed Everest. My favorite part is italicized:
"I realized something on that night in the dark on Everest. What I realized was that real winning had nothing to do with beating someone else, or crossing the finish line first, or standing on top. Winning wasn't anything external at all. It was an internal satisfaction, a deep inner sense of pride and joy. Success can only be measured within ourselves, by ourselves. It has nothing to do with other people's perception of our achievements. It has everything to do with our own perceptions of our efforts…
Success isn't standing on the podium, or hearing the cheers of others, or standing on the summit at all. It's giving it your all… I think that in anything in life, if you give it everything you possibly can, you really do succeed…
Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves, to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today, to do our work with more force than ever before. We took comfort in the words of Gandhi: 'Full effort is full victory'…
I have come to understand that for me this notion of success is upside down. In fact, a traditional end- the summit, an Olympic gold medal, or wealth- only serves as a navigational tool, a marker to give the process direction. The end for me is a greater depth and breadth of character. I measure this in terms of greater integrity, better business and communication skills, and a higher personal motivation to become stronger. More simply, my aim is to become as internally knowledgeable and as externally aware as possible. The process, the experience, the struggle, the hard-won lessons, these are ends in themselves."
-Clarke & Hobson, 2005
I was happy to see this in a management book. The faculty in my MPA program really try to instill these ideals in us. We are not to climb on top of each other to finish first, we are to work together to lift ourselves even higher than if we were to do it alone. well, I'm a true believer in this. Help others and it inadvertantly helps you. I suppose it's along the lines of what Matthew says, with a more business-world application, if you will :) - "whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."
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