Blending Scholarship and Discipleship

Good morning, President Oaks, Elder Kearon, Elder Gilbert, President Reese, dignitaries, family, and friends. And to my fellow graduates in the class of 2025, congratulations!

Early last fall I was looking out onto the same stage you are looking at now, and I remember hearing the sounds of drums pounding and strings playing as students from our university performed songs and dances from countries around the world for BYU’s World of Dance. With tears in my eyes, I recall having the words “These are my children” come repeatedly to my mind. “Love them, get to know them, for these are my children.”

Looking out at you now, I can hear the same words whisper in my mind, and I am so grateful that through my time in the BYU journalism program, I have received ample opportunities to heed this heavenly invitation.

Working as a reporter, copy editor, and later editor in chief of the BYU Daily Universe, I’ve been blessed to sit with many of you, hear your stories, and share them.

Through multiple mentored experiential learning opportunities, I have also been able to take what I’ve learned abroad, using these skills to report on a global press freedom conference in Chile, study diverse faiths and peoples across multiple European countries, and, just two months ago, fly to Germany to research the life of Karl G. Maeser for a documentary that will honor his legacy as a part of BYU’s 150th anniversary.

In every case, these opportunities—on campus and abroad—have expanded my world and perspective, along with my ability to love and connect with God’s children.

Likewise, each of us here today has been blessed with formative experiences throughout our BYU education. Through these experiences we’ve been taught by the Spirit and by our university’s excellent faculty and staff how to blend our scholarship with our discipleship. We’ve applied our learning in a variety of situations and at times we may have even seen slivers of the individual missions given to us by our Heavenly Father.

Yet at other times—and even now, as we contemplate all we’ve received and our own hopes for the future—we may find ourselves wondering, as did a New Testament apostle before meeting the Savior, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?”¹

Can there any good thing come out of Provo? Can there any good thing come out of me? Can there any good thing come out of my humble efforts to study or find work or make a difference? Can I—or will I—truly be able to discern and fulfill the work divinely appointed to me?

I believe the answer to those questions is a resounding yes! As President C. Shane Reese put it: “God loves underdogs. He loves come-from-behind victories. He loves the impossible.”²

I know this is true, for I have seen these underdog, come-from-behind victory stories time and time again. I have seen members of the BYU Catholic Newman Club integrate their faith with the university’s values, bringing hundreds to attend the first Catholic mass on campus since the club was reinstated. I have seen a Palestinian Syrian refugee studying at BYU who persistently shows up ready to learn and ready to serve, even amid the adversities in his life.

And I have seen this underdog, come-from-behind victory story in my own life. Having emigrated from Mexico to Utah as a nine-year-old girl, I once could barely form a sentence in English, let alone speak in front of an audience this size. Reading was difficult. And writing? Even harder.

The very fact that I’m standing here today is a miracle. The very fact that I chose a career in which the bulk of what I do is reading and writing is an act of faith. And so it is with each of you.

All of us, no matter where we come from or who we are, have an underdog story. We’ve taken leaps of faith. And after many times of praying relentlessly outside the Testing Center, after watching the clock tick closer and closer to our midnight deadlines, and after staying up well past that time just to have fun with our friends and roommates, we have made it here.

We have made it to this moment with the proof that God works through the unlikely—the underdogs—to accomplish the impossible. Still, this moment is not the end.

Life will continue, and challenges will arise. Forks in the road will require us to choose where we stand and the path we will follow.

But I know, as I have seen in every other underdog story, including my own, that by choosing to anchor ourselves in the foundation of learning and faith in the Savior—the dual heritage that we have acquired at this university and that will continue throughout our lives—we will always reap the greatest victories.

Picture this: Early in the establishment of this underdog institution, a fire ravaged the Lewis Building, Brigham Young Academy’s only schoolhouse. Devastated, Reed Smoot, a future apostle and senator, met Karl G. Maeser, our university’s founder, on the street and cried, “Oh, Brother Maeser, the Academy is burned!”

Maeser quickly replied, “No such thing. It’s only the building.”³ “The Academy lives on.”⁴

My fellow graduates, this academy-turned-university lives on. And it will continue to live on in our hearts if we let it, if we daily choose to make our scholarship an extension of our discipleship and if we work unitedly to shine out into the world the unique light we’ve received here.

So, as we leave this place—the place where we’ve prayed, studied, served, and been shaped—let us retain our dual heritage and continue to be “bilingual” in the languages “of scholarship and . . . spiritual things,” as envisioned by President Spencer W. Kimball.⁵ Let us go forward with gratitude, allowing our distinct skills and experiences to launch us into a lifetime of service. Let us place our trust in the Savior—the single greatest underdog and miracle the world has ever seen—knowing that through Him we too will rise to victory.

Class of 2025, thank you, and congratulations!

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