My freshman year of college I found out there was a major called Family Life, and I thought, "Cool, I like family, I like life, maybe I should check it out." Or something along those lines. So I took the basic Family Studies class, Strengthening Marriage and Family. Aaaaand since BYU is an LDS college the entire class was based on
The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Like, literally everything. I even had to memorize the whole thing for a project.
And I totally fell in love with the major. I loved what I was learning, I loved how applicable it was to my current family, my future family, and I loved that if I wanted to I could turn this knowledge into a career and help families other than my own be more successful. I loved learning about my own religion, and I loved family life even more.
If there's one thing that I've learned from these past 3 years at school, it's that the institution of the family needs to be protected. I honestly believe that if everyone came from a functional and loving family, there would be a lot less problems in this world. The proclamation says that, "the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets." Which sounds crazy dark and scary, but honestly it's true. It's so sad to see all the heartbreak and sadness in the world that could have been prevented if people protected and sanctified their marriages and families.
I want to express my gratitude that I was born to the family and religion that I have. I got real lucky.
It's been a couple years since I've taken that beginning class, but there's a class that I'm currently in that has had a huge impact on how I think and on what I want to do with my life. It's called Family Life in World Religions. It's all about day to day life of Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, and Muslim families. And I realized that yeah, I love learning about my own religion and how to strengthen marriage and families, but I also love learning about OTHER religions and their views on marriage and the family.
Seriously, after learning about day-to-day life of each religion, I wanted to join their religions. (But not really cause I love being Mormon.) But honestly, there is so much to learn from people of other faiths, and I'm definitely going to implement some of the things I've been learning about in my own daily life.
So I get to be a TA for this class until I graduate, and be a research assistant for my professor's national research project,
American Families of Faith! I'm so excited. I have no idea what kind of career I would go into being interested in the combination of religion and family, but I'll hopefully figure that out as I go along. I just know that I want to help strengthen families!
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