Question Time

[gurdonark]

Three notes to self:

1. Time to re-read Great Expectations
2. Perhaps it is time to move to a camera with more than .1 megapixels
3. Time to expand my marketing skills.

Note to you:

Today it came to me that I read so many of you so very assiduously, and yet I feel that often I miss essential threads.
Sometimes I put one of you in NY, when years ago you moved to MA, or some such. Sometimes I read your elaborately-plotted lives and realize that I have questions to which you have answers if it were only polite to ask. I'm not really talking about
those matters of personal experience which only prurience would cause one to invade (not that I lack any degree of human flaw in any particular respect, but I like to think my flaws are measured and suitably boring). On the other hand, the exercise perhaps benefits from an element of unpredictability about the questions. I mean to ask those plot points which a courteous person would not ask for fear of seeming intrusive, out of place, out of reckoning, inattentive, or just darned incisive.

I rather like those odd UK parliaments with their Question Times. I propose to you something to which you may agree by entering a comment. I propose that you grant me amnesty to ask you a question or questions about your life that I would ordinarily feel too shy to ask directly. The "amnesty" means that I know, before I ask, that asking anyone a question about a novel rather lacks decorum. I also know that many of my questions could be solved by assiduous reading.

You are not bound to answer, and you are free, if you do answer, to answer obliquely. You'll see as readily as I do that
it will be more fun for you if you can be more revelatory, in a very public setting, but I don't want you to tell me something
you'd regret sharing. I am not encouraging you to tell me secrets, as secrets have this beautiful banality about them that
I do not always require of life.

Would you like to grant me amnesty to ask you a question or questions? If so, just type in the comments--I grant you amnesty.

Comments

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

T., this post actually originates in some way from the LDS missionaries I saw peddling by tonight. I wondered to myself, "I know some LDS women have similar things they do, and some do not--I'd ask T. if she does, but that would not be polite", and one thing led to another and voila! this post. My first question is:

1. when you were the right age, did you do some kind of mission trip/experience?

2. What happened to your notion of moving to the Pacific NW?

3. Is your job more settled down now?

4. Where did you grow up? go to college?

5. Were your parents raised LDS, or did they convert?

[mortuus.livejournal.com]

1. I went on a mission two years after I reached the eligible age. I originally hadn't planned on going at all. It just didn't interest me, plus I couldn't afford it (you or your family have to pay for it, though sometimes your congregation can help; everyone pays the same - about $300 - no matter where in the world they go so it isn't an excessive hardship on just the ones who go someplace expensive like Tokyo, and money is doled out according to need).

However, all of a sudden, out of the middle of nowhere, I suddenly, desperately wanted to go. I attribute it to the Lord thwaping me on the head and telling me it was meant to be. Money was still an issue, though. My parents were in no position to help, and I was on my own for paying for school, so I didn't see a way to pay for a mission. A couple months after I started wanting to go, a friend in organic chemistry who was soon departing on her mission was chatting with me before class started, and we ended up on the topic of deferring Stafford loans. I had been told it was not an option for a mission, and yet she said it was possible because that's what she was doing. Being a skeptic, I didn't totally believe her, so after class I went to the financial aid office to ask. Yep, can be deferred for a mission. Huh. (I don't know if I'd been given bad info originally or if it changed.) Two days latter my mother called (I had never mentioned to her any interest in going on a mission) and mentioned in passing, thinking it didn't really matter, that the bishop of our ward (congregation) had mentioned to my parents that the ward was in a position to fully fund a mission if my sister or I were interested. Huh.

And so I went the following spring after the semester ended. I was assigned to Chicago (you don't get to pick where you go).

2. I still want to move to the Pacific NW. Most of my resumes head there, though I also send some to open positions elsewhere in the West.

3. It's more settled, I suppose, though I still apply to at least half a dozen jobs each week. It's going nowhere and is very frustrating.

4. I grew up in Utah. I started out going to college at Vassar College, but found it to be not quite what I was looking for. I loved the campus (aside from the dorms), and if I had been an English or art history major it would have been perfect, but as a science major (at the time physics) it seemed mediocre. Frustrated and not wanting to go through the multiple applications to colleges again like I had just the year before in high school, I applied to BYU just because I knew it would be an acceptable school. So that's where I finished out my college and graduated. Luckily it ended up being a good decision and I loved it there.

5. My dad was raised LDS. My mom converted to the church when she was 17. The rest of her family remained Catholic or Methodist, though her sister and some of her sister's kids converted about a decade later.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I can say that the clarity of expression in your journal
suggests to me that any employer should hire you. I'd offer to review your resume, except I'm pretty sure you're a better writer than I am.

If you ever need a free place to stay for a Texas interview, my wife and I would put you up gladly. It's not Oregon, by a mile, but it's fairly inexpensive.

Vassar and then BYU. Contrasting topographies, I'd say.


My undergrad degree is in physics, although my strengths were all in the liberal arts.

We had family reunions in my family when I was a kid, and it was a bit like yours--distant kin popped up with a panoply of Christian religious affiliation--LDS, Catholic, protestant, and so forth. Now I have an in-law with an Orthodox brother in law, so I've almost got the complete value pack and can move on to add other collections of faiths.