Shel's Trip to the Symposium

I was fortunate enough to attend the address of the keynote speaker, Riley Lorimer, for BYU’s English Symposium in March of 2016.  The session was held at 11:00am in room 1060 of the Harold B. Lee Library.  Ms. Lorimer is a professional editor and works for the Church on The Joseph Smith Papers project in Salt Lake City. She described her work as ensuring that the Papers were accurately and elegantly presented to the public. Her work, to me, seemed really intense, though tedious at times.  She talked about how she and her staff had deliberated for hours over the correct placement of a comma when referring to the polygamist wives of Brigham Young.  It blew me away to realize how much thought goes into the preparation of documents for the Church.

Ms. Lorimer’s main focus in her address was about learning to ask questions.  She talked about how, through her work, she has learned to question and interrogate people so that their stories can come through clearly.  She then related the questions that she asked to the work that she did on The Joseph Smith Papers at work.  She talked about how the deep investigation on historical records often led to some uneasy questions, but we cannot be afraid of them. I loved when she talked about learning to be comfortable with unanswered questions, because I believe that’s part of maturely looking at the world.  She stated that “The best response to black and white thinking isn’t shades of gray, it’s vibrant color.” By looking at the world with color, we are able to learn so much more and avoid the muddled middle-ness of grays.

Riley finished up by talking about the power of empathy.  She said that by asking questions, we learn that the struggles that we think make us “unique” actually end up connecting us to the rest of humanity.  By coming to understand the ideas of others and their pasts, dreams, and insights, we are able to become more compassionate.  I loved listening to her opinions and learned so much from this session!