Thoughts on Auntie Beth's Presentation

I must admit, I didn't think that I was going to get a whole lot out of a talk on the differences between "Nehor and Nephi's" writing styles (at least that is what I thought I was going to be hearing about). But I ended up coming away with a whole new perspective on writing and I am very glad that I went. I have always seen writing papers as a waste of time and mental energy that could be better spend elsewhere, but after hearing Mrs. Hedengren's (I'm calling her Auntie Beth from now on) speech, I honestly feel like now I have more of a purpose in writing. I liked how she intertwined lots of quotes and stories from General Authorities in her talk, I am really a sucker for quotable quotes so those helped me to stay focused on what she was saying.

As for her claims, reasons, and assumption, I think I did a pretty decent job of picking them out. From what I understood, it sounded like her main argument was that writing is meant to be used for the betterment and benefit of both the reader and the writer. It is not just some useless thing that teachers make us do in college so we have homework, but rather a tool for creating a better society and preserving memories for generations to come. She included a quote to support this argument from the ancient Roman Philosopher Quintillion (I'm almost certain I spelled that wrong). He said "Your not writing well if you're not writing for good reasons." This supports her claim that writing can be used as a means of bringing about good. Another one of her claims was that by writing with the intent of helping others, you can gain virtues for yourself. The four virtues she focused on were humility, charity, clarity, and stick-to-it-ivity (not a real word). She gave lots of examples of how when we strive to write for worthy reasons, we are blessed with more of these virtues. Throughout the whole talk Auntie Beth cited a story from her beginning teaching days here at BYU when she had to write a paper to defend her and her fellow part-time employees. She described to us how this taught her about how to gain the four virtues as she struggled to write the paper that she wanted to. Some of the assumptions she made were that we were all members of the church in the room (which is a pretty safe bet at BYU) and that we all understood certain gospel teachings and lingo. Things like journal writing, and what the Ensign is.

Overall, I thought that her speech was great. I know that at least one person left the room feeling inspired to be a better writer and student. I hope that I can carry over what I learned today from Auntie Beth into the essays that I write in the future. And that as a result, I will be able to make the world a better place through my writing.