Sometimes it pays to be in grad school

Near the beginning of this semester, one of my professors discussed with the class a moral conundrum that he was facing. He has taken a new job teaching different classes at another university, and this semester will be the last semester he is here at Utah State. He had a number of books that had been sent to him by publishers who hoped he would implement their books into his classes. He wanted to get rid of the books, but did not want to sell them and keep the money, since he had received them from the publishers for free. His decided the only fair thing was to share the wealth with the class instead of keeping the money for himself. Obviously, we were quite agreeable to the idea and talked about using the money for a pizza party in class or something like that. Well, today at the end of class, the professor said he had something for each of us. He then proceeded to hand a $20 bill to each of the fifteen class members. It was definitely a welcome surprise. How often do you get paid for going to class? And it definitely beats pizza!

Farewell, President Hinckley

As my wife just blogged, we saw the news tonight that our beloved prophet, President Gordon B. Hinckley, passed away this evening. I can just see him waving his cane like in this picture to say goodbye to the world. He has been the prophet since before I graduated from high school, throughout my mission, college, and what seems like forever. I'm sure he is overjoyed to be reunited with his wife again, but he will certainly be missed.

I got ripped off!

So accoridng to this article my alma mater is the most expensive University in the world! At least it wasn't quite that expensive when I was going to school. And, like the article mentions, they do shell out a lot of aid. My total price tag was about one year's tuition, after scholarships and grants are taken into account. Oh well - at least Utah State is significantly less expensive. I will come out of graduate school with very little (if any) student debt.

Package thoughts

Do you think FedEx and UPS get their mail delivered by the USPS? And do you think that UPS ever gets a package sent via FedEx or vise versa? Like, if UPS orders supplies by a company that uses FedEx for their shipping? That's my random question for right now. Let me know your thoughts.