My unlikely place for peace

This evening I spent a few hours in one of my favorite buildings on campus.

Isn't it pretty?

It's even prettier when the line goes outside and wraps around a couple other buildings.

Although the imposing walls of the Heber J. Grant building instill a feeling of dread in the hearts of many students as they anticipate with trepidation the impending mental taxation that will be placed upon them and the subsequent negative ramifications on their grade, that building has become a sanctuary for me. Now, don’t get me wrong, I worry about my exams just as much as the next neurotic college student. I do the requisite amount of fretting, fearing, with of course a bit of studying thrown in there before I hand my ID card to the friendly student behind the desk and take my cover sheet into the big open room of testing. But once the pre-test worry draws to its conclusion and I walk up the broad staircase into the pink-ceilinged elegance of the testing center, my dread slips away. And in place of that pre-test worry simultaneously descend both peace and an anticipation almost akin to that of Christmas morning. The time of preparation has passed. The time has come for me to stop worrying that I don’t know all the dates or that there are three steps of the mechanism that I forgot and so I need to study more. I’m one of those people who could study for my o chem test for five months and still have more to learn. But when the deadline comes and I have to end the studying, I feel a sense of relief. However thorough or extensive my studying was, walking up those steps in the testing center brings to an end to that fretful studying and I have to accept my efforts and move on. And that’s a good feeling—knowing that you put forth what effort you could and now are accountable for it. There is nothing more you can do now except for write what you know on paper.

As I sit down in my chosen desk—one of those that are gray and open on both sides—I feel something much like I did as a missionary. (Hey, don't groan. Sometimes my mission analogies are good.) Yes, it’s difficult to answer questions about chemistry or molecular biology for 3 or 4 hours, just as it’s challenging to be outside all day preaching the gospel. But as I put my pencil to the first page of the test packet, I taste the sweetness of that feeling that was constantly mine as a missionary—that of knowing I am exactly where I ought to be, doing what I ought to be doing. Yeah, I've probably got twenty other obligations pressing on my time. I still need to finish up things for work. And for my other classes. And maybe try to scrape up some semblance of a social life. But by walking up those steps to the testing center, I’d made a conscious commitment for the next few hours to leave everything else behind. All outside distractions have left. The wiles of Facebook and texting can no longer assail me. The concentration of my introverted personality cannot be broken by any friends I happen to see. I’m no longer trying to balance fifty thoughts in my mind at once. My entire focus can rest upon the task set physically before me on the desk. I can no longer guilt trip myself, saying that some other task would be more effective for the current moment. Nope—I’ve got no other choices and no other obligations. I am at peace as I play my chemistry games. It’s just me and my molecules and the sunset through the stretching windows surrounding me.

A few weeks ago, as I entered the nearly empty testing center to take my first exam in nearly two years, that sense of peace and purpose surrounded me. And I realized how much I missed that feeling that had permeated my mission. And I felt that again tonight as I labored over my IR and structure deduction. Peace. Returned missionaries are especially prone to becoming overwhelmed by the enormity of the number of obligations that now assail them, having just focused every ounce of attention on a single purpose. But I think we’re all susceptible to this. It’s so easy in our daily lives to let the press of all our obligations weigh on our minds to such a degree that we can focus on nothing. Which is why I so much love those formidable walls that encase some of my most mentally taxing memories--there I once again find the opportunity to focus on one thing at a time. I guess the ultimate goal is to create that kind of peace and focus wherever I am through effective planning and mental control. But until I reach that point, I'm grateful for the crutch that is my little friend the testing center, my little sanctuary.