Suzanne Robertson
04-04-2011, 09:24 PM
By the time I had been in Argentina for a year I was completely acclimated. I loved the country and the intelligent, creative people. It felt like home. I wanted to stay permanently but missions don’t work that way. After 2 ? years they sent me home. It had taken me 30 days to arrive in Buenos Aires by boat. Now, after only 24 hours in the air, I found myself back in California. Wow, what an adjustment loomed ahead.
I hadn’t been sick at all during my mission but, by the time I got off the airplane, I was ill. The doctor treated a fungus I had picked up and I simply crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my head. I was there for weeks. No one knew what to do with me so they just let me sleep. When I finally recovered I realized I had to make some decisions about my future. What was I going to do?
I was only seven when Don left home and when he returned he was a stranger. I can remember vividly tiptoeing into his room just to stare at him sleeping. I thought he would never wake up.
I had become aware, during my time in South America, that I was not well educated. Even though I had graduated 6th in my class at Santa Monica High I was a slow reader and I had never finished a work of literature from cover to cover. There was something missing in my life. It seemed the right thing to do to go back to BYU.
I needed a major. Art would have been the obvious choice but at that time I saw artists as a “little strange” and I didn’t want to be strange with them. I knew where my weakness lay. I made myself walk past the music department and the art department and cross the room to register as an English Literature major.
For the next two years I sat in class after class listening to philosophies and histories, and the art of communication through great writing. A whole new world opened up to me.
It was hard. The other students had spent years preparing for this and I was behind. I read and read, I studied, and I caught up.
I had a wonderful professor who would come into class each day and write on the chalkboard… “Literature will illuminate your life.” I found him amusing and didn’t think too much about it. The truth is those words were penetrating my very soul. They became my mantra.
At the end of my senior year this same little professor came to me and offered me an assistantship teaching English Literature at BYU.
I said, “I can’t do that, I draw, I’m an artist.” He just smiled.
What I didn’t completely understand at the time was that my exposure to literature and my artistic goals were about to intersect. The lessons I learned in my English classes would illuminate the road ahead.
Write it down, read it, believe it… “Literature will illuminate your life.”
Suzanne
I hadn’t been sick at all during my mission but, by the time I got off the airplane, I was ill. The doctor treated a fungus I had picked up and I simply crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my head. I was there for weeks. No one knew what to do with me so they just let me sleep. When I finally recovered I realized I had to make some decisions about my future. What was I going to do?
I was only seven when Don left home and when he returned he was a stranger. I can remember vividly tiptoeing into his room just to stare at him sleeping. I thought he would never wake up.
I had become aware, during my time in South America, that I was not well educated. Even though I had graduated 6th in my class at Santa Monica High I was a slow reader and I had never finished a work of literature from cover to cover. There was something missing in my life. It seemed the right thing to do to go back to BYU.
I needed a major. Art would have been the obvious choice but at that time I saw artists as a “little strange” and I didn’t want to be strange with them. I knew where my weakness lay. I made myself walk past the music department and the art department and cross the room to register as an English Literature major.
For the next two years I sat in class after class listening to philosophies and histories, and the art of communication through great writing. A whole new world opened up to me.
It was hard. The other students had spent years preparing for this and I was behind. I read and read, I studied, and I caught up.
I had a wonderful professor who would come into class each day and write on the chalkboard… “Literature will illuminate your life.” I found him amusing and didn’t think too much about it. The truth is those words were penetrating my very soul. They became my mantra.
At the end of my senior year this same little professor came to me and offered me an assistantship teaching English Literature at BYU.
I said, “I can’t do that, I draw, I’m an artist.” He just smiled.
What I didn’t completely understand at the time was that my exposure to literature and my artistic goals were about to intersect. The lessons I learned in my English classes would illuminate the road ahead.
Write it down, read it, believe it… “Literature will illuminate your life.”
Suzanne