Didja ever notice?

First of all, a quick shoutout to our newest blog member Howie G. Welcome to our humble abode.

Okay, so I’m sitting here in my Personal Financial Planning class and we’ve got a guest speaker. Now, my regular complaint about this class is that it sometimes feels like a Sunday School class with a little bit of financial information thrown in. Well today, we’ve got a guy here who is apparently meant to talk to us about portfolio management, but he’s now spent over a half hour talking in a rambling fashion about his conversion story. Fascinating stuff in the proper context I suppose, but kind of frustrating here in class. It makes me think about the problem with church speakers in general. Not General Conference speakers mind you. Those guys usually write tight well-organized talks. No, what I’m talking about is the standard talk you tend to hear from the special guest General Authority at the end of Stake Conference. These guys speak so much that they tend to get up to the stand and just improvise. They talk about the other speakers. They talk about the “beautiful chapel.” They talk about various minutiae. And then, at the very end, they make some brief spiritual point and sit down. Then everybody leaves talking about what a great speaker he is. This always bothers me. It seems lazy and pointless. Man, if you’re going to talk, write a talk! Or if you’re gifted with some improvisational skill, at least have a general direction to what you’re talking about. Whoa, I think this guy is finally getting to the topic at hand. Maybe I’ll go back to listening.