My BYU Magazine Moment

I spent my senior year at BYU writing a three unit class fusing together my major and minor, Technology and Engineering Education and Music (I focused on sound recording), then teaching my curriculum during student teaching.  It was a lot of work and I probably would have given up a few times if Andrew hadn’t laid down next to me on the carpet while I was in despair and encouraged me to keep on going. A little more than two and a half years ago I defended my honors thesis titled “High School Sound Recording Curriculum Utilizing the iPad” in the midst of morning sickness. While the committee deliberated I waited outside the door in the Maeser building with my friend Phoebe, who just happened to be walking by and chatted with me to keep my nerves at bay.  When they called me back in I got the good news that I had passed and I walked out the door thinking that I had closed that chapter on that part of my life.  It was a good feeling; a little bittersweet, but I had successfully written and defended a thesis and I felt liberated.

October 23, 2013 – two weeks after Emily was born – my advisor sent Andrew and I an email about collaborating on a paper to disseminate my curriculum and get the work out into academia.  We exchanged a few emails about where to publish and the direction we would like to take the paper. And then reality hit and I took care of our newborn and really ignored the fact that I should be writing a paper.

October 24, 2014 – one year later – Andrew found a conference that would be a good audience for the paper and we let our professor know we were on track to being productive once again. Over the next few weeks we made some good progress.  Andrew submitted a blurb to the conference to see if it would be accepted. When we got the green light a few months later, I read my thesis for the first time since I defended it and wrote an entirely different paper at 3am, trying to get it done before Emily woke up. Andrew took the paper that I wrote and made it sound really scholarly with lots of citations (one of the many reasons he is going to make a great professor). We sent it back and forth a few times with our professor and did our final submission. Andrew built a one page website for the curriculum so people could download it for use.

March 2015 – Andrew presented my curriculum at a conference in Las Vegas. It was well received and really nice to have the weight off my chest of writing a paper after a year and a half. It was now officially done.

July 2015 – I received the most unexpected email from BYU Magazine asking for a fact check for the blurb they were considering about my Sound Recording Curriculum. I was shocked and so excited. I’ve been a lifelong reader (successful brainwashing mom and dad! :)) and I never dreamed in million years my name would be in it.

August 2015 – the magazine arrived and lo and behold, our little paragraph is in there, complete with a link to the website Andrew built.  I never dreamed more than two years ago that the work I did would be shared in such a way. I thought that it would be buried in the stacks of thesis at BYU never to be heard of again.

It has been a fun surprise and walk down memory lane and to work once again with Andrew on a project in our field. I’m grateful though to realize that I am perfectly happy with where I am at in my life; a stay at home mom with my girl, not pursuing another degree.  It is a great season of life.