Each of you was given a copy of the “Aims of a BYU Education.” It lists four broad aspirations for your education. Your education here is intended to be spiritually strengthening, intellectually enlarging, character building, and lead to lifelong learning and service.
You might well ask how you can realize these lofty aims. A fair question. Let me help by sharing advice from Dallin H. Oaks, a former president of Brigham Young University. On September 1, 1979, he set forth what he called a “formula for success at BYU,” containing four timeless ingredients. This formula, said President Oaks, “is the same for you as it was for those who enrolled a century or a half-century or a quarter-century ago.”1 It is the same for you and for me nearly twenty years later. In the spirit of our homecoming theme last week, “Echoes of Truth,” let me share echoes from President Oaks to guide you to success at BYU.
1. Be Worthy
There is a close connection between your worthiness and the quality of your BYU education. President Oaks noted that “we learn best when we are in harmony with the commandments of Him who is the source of all truth. By this means we can have the companionship of the Holy Ghost, the great teacher whose mission is to testify of Christ, to guide us into all truth and to bring all things to our remembrance (John 14:26, 15:26, 16:13). Pray for the companionship of the Holy Spirit. . . . By this means you ‘seek learning, even by study and also by faith’ (D&C 88:118).”2
There is a close connection between sin and the inability to learn: “Sin drives out the Spirit of the Lord. . . . This is one of those eternal principles that you can verify by immediate personal experience. Recall a time when you were resentful or quarrelsome or angry or filled with hate. Could you study effectively? Could you think clearly? Did you receive any enlightenment during that period? Sin and anger darken the mind.”3
I recall going to a tutorial with a BYU professor I greatly admired. As we began, I gave the false impression that I’d been at a devotional. My mind went dark. I was agitated and couldn’t learn from him. Finally, I interrupted the discussion, confessed that I had not been truthful. The Spirit returned and I could learn.
The Spirit is an important aid to learning in every subject. It can teach the truth of all things—not just religious truths. Brigham Young charged Karl Maeser, “You must not attempt to teach even the alphabet or the multiplication table without the Spirit of God.”4
You will not learn all you should or can at BYU if you are unworthy. BYU is uniquely dedicated to the proposition that virtue and integrity are essential to your education. So be worthy!
2. Seek Learning
I love what President Oaks had to say about this principle: “If you would be successful in pursuing an education at BYU, be hungry to learn. If you desire to obtain a good education, one that will increase your joy and enlarge your capacity to serve your family, your community, and your profession, seek learning for the sake of learning. Do not limit yourself to a grudging compliance with minimum requirements of attendance, assignments, and degrees. Pursue learning for the purpose implied in the motto of this University—‘The Glory of God is Intelligence.’”5
I recently hit the roof on a family trip when one of my children spoke of “getting general education out of the way.” The familiar phrase expresses a dreary view of general education as an obstacle in the way of a degree, instead of integral to our purpose for being at BYU. Our goal should not be merely to get through college but to make sure that college gets through us in the process.
“Remember,” says President Oaks, “that you are here to gain an education, to become a person of learning. This qualification or status often involves degrees and an increased value on your services in the marketplace, but it is distinguishable from either of them. A learned person can think clearly and communicate effectively and has a fund of knowledge and understanding about people and social institutions and the physical world.”6
I predict that the general skills you acquire in writing, reasoning, and understanding of the world will prove to be the most enduring and useful attainments of your BYU education. Specialized skills often help people land their first job, but general abilities enable both professional advancement and personal fulfillment. Particularly critical is the ability and desire for continued learning. My brother, who is a chief strategic planner for PepsiCo’s international operations, says that it’s relatively easy to find employees with good technical skills, but it’s very hard for the company to find technically skilled people who can also think and write well.
President Oaks observed: “An educated person will be adaptable, because his or her skills and knowledge are the general kind that equip a person to live and lead in society, not just to perform a highly specific individual task. The trouble with highly specialized skills is that technology can make them as obsolete as the skills involved in manufacturing clipper ships, carriages, or slide rules.”7
So seek learning. A learned Latter-day Saint will be prepared to fulfill President Hinckley’s injunction to make a positive contribution in the world. Read a good newspaper. Even more important, read good books and journals that help you understand the deeper contexts for current events—the news that remains news. Attend devotionals and selectively attend lectures, concerts, operas, and plays. This is a season to establish good habits and refine your tastes. President Oaks counseled: “Do you know what is happening in the world around you? Do you read a newspaper every day, or do you depend on the fragments of news you receive on television or radio? In addition to the [Daily] Universe, which should be read for campus news, each BYU student should read at least one other daily newspaper.”8
I am struck by how well President Hinckley models this advice. He is a genuinely educated Latter-day Saint and a good model for you. President Hinckley is a regular reader of a fine national paper, The Wall Street Journal. He is also a reader of good books. I was touched by his love of good books at a recent groundbreaking ceremony for the addition to the library. He grew up in a home with a wonderful library of many thousand volumes. He, himself, inherited many of these and has an excellent personal library, which he reads. At the groundbreaking ceremony he mentioned that when preparing a speech this summer, he wanted to quote a passage from George Washington’s Farewell Address, which of course he remembered from having read it many times. So he went to his library, picked up his own well-read volume of the Harvard Classics, and found the passage. Then he spoke of his love for the heft and feel of a book in his hands, which he prefers to electronic sources.
Likewise, I talked to the ambassador from Portugal last week. He had just met with the First Presidency. He talked with President Hinckley about Macau, a former Portuguese colony next to Hong Kong. It is going to be returned to China and the ambassador had negotiated the terms. He was amazed that President Hinckley knew about the negotiations and how the terms differed from those Great Britain had negotiated for Hong Kong. President Hinckley had a deep knowledge of the history, politics, geography, and economy of the region.
Moreover, President Hinckley is not only well read. He is also well spoken and “well written,” as it were. He is a man of almost spontaneous eloquence, with both his tongue and pen. This has come from a lifetime habit of reading from the best books and of writing. I recall that once he had to prepare a major address to the faculty at BYU about a sensitive controversial topic. I was told that he wrote his address, which was brilliant, in an hour and at a single sitting!
This is our prophet. A man of wide knowledge of “things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, . . . and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms” (D&C 88:79).
Seek to imitate him. Seek learning. “Those who are not willing to seek learning,” admonishes President Oaks, “should voluntarily withdraw from the University and allow their place to be taken by some of the thousands who are clamoring for admission. . . . The Church and its members are investing [heavily in] your education. . . . Are you investing a commensurate amount of time and effort to seek learning?”9
3. Work Hard
The third ingredient is “work hard.” I well remember the way President Oaks taught us this. His maxim has rung in my mind ever since. Said he: “I know of no better words of advice on this subject than to ‘work first, and play later.’ The discipline of forcing oneself to work first until the job is completed—whether it be a daily assignment, a term paper, or other needed task—and only then to enjoy the pleasure of play is a master secret of life. It bears immediate fruits in accomplishment, but its most important long-range effect is self-discipline, which unlocks the door to undreamed-of accomplishments.”10
“Work first, and play later.” What a powerful teaching! President Oaks lived it; he had a prodigious capacity for work. He often said that he did not feel that he was smarter than the students he studied with at the University of Chicago law school, but that he knew how to work harder. While others played, he was toiling in the night.
President Oaks taught that real education requires hard work. I’ve heard President Bateman make the same point. They know the truth of these lines by the poet John Donne, who describes the quest for truth as the ascent of a great hill:
On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must and about must go.11
Those who would enjoy grand vistas from the mount of learning must earn the view.
I know that many of you are working very, very hard. But now you must learn to work effectively as well. Most of us waste a lot of time in “fiddle faddle.” This is the term used in my father’s mission for busy-ness that didn’t really accomplish anything. Some missionaries got very good at filling the day with nonproductive busy-ness. There is a difference between busy-ness and work. So I would add to President Oaks’s counsel to work hard, this addendum: “Work smart.”
I recommend that you learn to take effective notes. That you learn how and when to use study groups. That you take advantage of the greatest untapped resources on campus: faculty office hours. And, above all, that you learn to ask good questions. Don’t be passive, “bench-bound listeners.”12 For discovery favors the inquisitive mind. Many people saw apples drop before Newton, but Newton saw them drop with a question in mind. His prepared mind was able to link falling apples to the motion of the moon and the planets.
4. Help Others
The fourth element in President’s Oaks formula for success at BYU is “Help Others.” Of this principle, President Oaks said: “The final ingredient of success at BYU requires us to lift our eyes from the essentially personal concerns of being worthy, seeking learning, and working hard. We should make a contribution to the lives and well-being of those around us, of the University, and of the Church that sponsors, supports, and directs us.”13
I hope you will learn early that your education is not for your own benefit but an investment in your future contributions to your families, the Church, and the world.
There is much more I could say about helping others. In the interest of time, let me simply say this: As you help others, learn to help others learn. You should assume responsibility for helping your classes be meaningful. This applies to Church classes and school classes. I recognize that if a class I am in is boring, it is partly my fault. Also take the opportunity to help others learn outside of class. I promise you that if you assume the responsibility for helping others learn, you will learn much more than you otherwise would.
So this is President Oaks’s simple formula for success at BYU:
Be Worthy
Seek Learning
Work Hard
Help Others
His address was given many years ago, but I believe that it is timeless. This was confirmed in my mind when I realized the congruence between President Oaks’s formula and the recently developed “Aims of a BYU Education”:
Be Worthy — Spiritually Strengthening
Seek Learning — Intellectually Enlarging
Work Hard — Character Building
Help Others — Lifelong Learning and Service
These are timeless elements for success at BYU. May we all endeavor to apply these principles and make the most of our educational opportunities here, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
