Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I’ve had a pretty big distraction this week that has prevented me from posting anything.You see, every year the BYU Alumni Association holds an essay contest designed “to encourage high levels of scholarship among BYU students and promote their understanding and appreciation of BYU’s mission and the legacy and challenges of its founders” (BYU Alumni Website). The topic for this year’s essay was “Catch the Spirit” as it relates to Joseph Smith Jr. as a founder of BYU. On thie surface, this seemed deceptively simple. Spirit? Joseph Smith? They go together like apple pie and baseball. Like peas and pods. Like the little square blocks that fit into the little square holes. Easy.

However, as I started to write the essay, I began to realize that “Catch the Spirit” was a little too rah-rah to apply handily to a meaningful topic. The longer I labored over this essay, the more exasperated I became until finally, in my frustration I typed this paragraph:

“‘Catch the Spirit’ is the type of saccharine, cutesy slogan that sounds good on paper but makes it difficult to put a real fine point on this topic. Aside from the obvious ‘catching the Spirit’ that can help you gain a real, spiritually-based education, it’s hard to see a really good, serious application. It’s just too cute, too cliche. In fact, I think of ‘Catch the Spirit,’ and I see a bunch of hyperactive shirtless guys with their faces and chests painted freezing their nipples off in a November snowstorm as they cheer on the school football team. That’s school spirit, and those guys have caught it. And it’s not the only thing they’ll be catching. That school spirit will go real well with the pneumonia they catch from exposure. So how the heck to you apply that to Joseph Smith and BYU? I mean, I just don’t see Brother Joseph as the bare-chested maniac type.”

Needless to say, I felt better after writing that, and ultimately I was considering submitting it in leiu of a real essay, should I be unable to come up with anything else. To make a long story short, I wrote a real essay, and hopefully I’ll hear back on it soon. I’ll try to keep the blog community updated as details become available.