Dictating My Undergraduate Career

My mother recently commented to my girlfriend that "things just tend to fall in Andrew's lap." I don't know why they do. They just do.

This has been a good week. It started out last Wednesday with BYU e-mailing me, telling me that a budget surplus had granted me an additional $1,025 of scholarship money this semester. But Friday night was the real shocker.

With graduation looming in 15 months, I decided that my year-long honors thesis should likely begin. Over dinner conversation with some friends, the idea of ethical development in business students was raised as a potential thesis. I liked it. I ran with it. I contacted a half dozen professors in the Marriott School and hashed out ideas with them. One agreed to be my thesis adviser with several more suggesting they would like to play a role in my project.

One of the professors I met with recently had dinner with a Marriott School Associate Dean. The Dean and the Marriott School had tested students using an ethical/moral reasoning test at entrance and graduation from the school for the past 2-4 years. He had no idea how to crunch the data, nor did he have anyone to crunch the data. The professor suggested that I do it. Friday, I received an invitation from the professor to meet with the Associate Dean.

I just finished my meeting about 45 minutes ago. I met with Associate Dean Thompson and fleetingly with Dean Cornia. They were thrilled to have a "win-win" situation. It's so much of a win that they would like me to work for the Dean's office on this and other related projects for the foreseeable future. What a blessing. I can not detail the multiplicity of significant blessings poured out upon me recently by a benevolent Providence. To do the project I will be coordinating with the faculty as a whole, doing more primary research, learning critical research computer programs, and doing a crash course on what they've done so far. I feel utterly incapable to do the task before me. I hope my inner mettle will prove equal to the challenge.

This post's humorous link (don't mess with an over-worked, over-stressed graduate student):
http://www.switched.com/2008/11/14/why-you-should-never-try-to-steal-a-law-students-laptop/?rss