Welcome to the recent speeches podcast presented by BYU speeches

featuring inspiring new devotional and forums given each week on BYU campus.

Be sure to check out our other podcasts by searching BYU speeches wherever you get your

podcasts or by visiting speeches dot BYU.edu slash podcasts.

I am thrilled to be here on this beautiful campus. When I graduated from

BYU in 1991 I left here wondering what my future would hold and back then really had no idea

of the influence of this place would have on my life's choices both

professionally and beyond. I remember sitting in these very seats here in the Marriott Center next to several friends watching

our high school buddy David Astell show off his skills playing center for the Cougar basketball team.

I was a business major in accounting so I was developing my quads going up and down the

stairs in the Tanner building. Like some of you here today I was too broke to eat at the

Wilk but I did have about a hundred ways to turn ramen noodles into a meal. Like all of you here also, in addition to my major studies and

a selection of religion classes, I was required to take a bunch of other core

classes. I think you know the ones I'm talking about, the classes that

make you wonder what does this have to do with the rest of my life? Or how is this going

to help in my career or in anything?

Luckily, I had my friend David to help me decide what to take.

Let's take geology, he said.

It's easy. He said they call it rocks for jocks.

He assured me it would be a breeze. Well, after the first day I could tell that this jock was mistaken.

Our professor was the chairman of the geology department and he was a geology guru.

We were in for a 16-week-long landslide of rocks and

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