Virginia is for Lovers...and for Stuarts

The state motto of Virginia is, “Virginia is for lovers.” It turns out that it’s also for accountants and academics! Meghan and I will be spending the next few years in the “Old Dominion” while I attend the University of Virginia’s Religious Studies program, and where I will be among the first students to study with the Richard L. Bushman Chair for Mormon Studies. I am beyond excited for the opportunity to study at UVA; the road to ending up at UVA was a bumpy one.

I originally applied to ten schools, 2 safety schools, 2 that I felt were comfortable reaches, and 6 “go big or go home” choices. I began hearing back from programs in February, and all I heard was “no” for 6 weeks. The rejection letters came by e-mail, every Wednesday (my day off from work) for several weeks in a row. The top programs rejected me first, which didn’t come as much of a surprise. I had only applied to them on certain faculty members who specialized in Mormonism (who took jobs at a different school that I applied to). I feel that I took the rejection fairly well; I was still very optimistic about the other schools I had applied to. And THEN I was rejected by Utah, and found out that Utah State lost my application. (Sidenote: not kidding, they lost my application.)

That was a dark day, when I heard the difficult news from Utah and Utah State. I listened to Fleet Foxes, the Smiths, and Simon and Garfunkel, and wallowed on my bed eating donuts and wondering what I was going to do with my life. 

What if I didn’t get into school? Why had I felt so strongly about pursuing graduate school if this was what was going to happen? I really started to question what on earth I had chosen to do as a profession and why I chose something that involved so much rejection before I even began applying for jobs.

Meghan is and was always my biggest supporter, and she stayed much more optimistic than I did during this troubling time. She told me that something would work out, and I always believed it more coming from her mouth instead of from myself. 

FINALLY, I received an e-mail from the University of Virginia while at work. Frankly, I expected it to be more of the same, “you’re a very strong applicant, please apply again next year” or “we regret that we are unable to offer you admission” (or hearing from backchannels that I was in the final round of cuts). I was prepared to be devastated. AND I WASN’T! I will be in the inaugural class of students who will study with Virginia’s new Mormon Studies Chair!

Initially, I didn’t want to apply to Virginia, I thought I had no chance of admission (it’s the best public university school for religious studies!), Luckily, the Mormon Studies Chair made it too appealing to bypass applying.

It’s exciting news, and at the same time very intimidating. I will spend 3 semesters learning, reading, writing, and preparing a thesis, and then will wait to hear where I will end up for a PhD program. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking, “how am I going to do everything that I want to in my career, and not make the sacrifice too great on my wife and future children?” Sometimes, as I see the wonderful folks who have gone on before me in history, religious studies, and Mormon Studies, I think to myself, “I will never be ___.,“ “I’ll never write like___,” I won’t be able to find a job.” Or the worst thought, “what if I’m only doing this because I’m too stubborn to try something I don’t want to?” It’s in these times that I remember some of my favorite scriptural passages about trusting the direction and revelation that God gives to us when we ask for guidance, guidance that I had earnestly sought every step of the way in deciding to go to grad school.

Hebrews 10:35-36

King James Version (KJV)

³⁵ Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.

³⁶ For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.

The talk that Elder Holland gave off of these few scriptures found here.

Long story short, thank you to all those who continue to love and support me, give me opportunities, and help me refine myself as a person and a scholar.

But MOST OF ALL, thank you to Meghan Jeanne Newby Stuart, who believes in me more than I ever could in myself. I love her and have no idea how I could ever be so lucky to have found her.

We have been given no assurance of an outcome as far as finding employment for Meghan or applying to schools again in a few years, only a clear directive: MOVE FORWARD. And so we will.