Speaking of the expression, "I want to make something of myself," President Boyd K. Packer told graduates of LDS Business College June 8: "You will have wisdom if you have come to the knowledge that you already are somebody! You are a son or daughter of God.

"You have been given gifts, and you've honored those gifts, and the very fact that you enrolled in this school, which is a very good school, and have exercised your determination, passed the courses and have studied, you're improving on that which you have been given."President Packer, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve, was the main speaker for the college's 108th annual commencement exercises, held in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. During the evening, more than 200 graduates received two-year associate of applied science degrees or one-year certificates.

Also attending the ceremony were President Packer's wife, Donna; Elder Henry B. Eyring of the Quorum of the Twelve, who is also Church Commissioner of Education; and his wife, Kathleen; and Elder Alexander B. Morrison of the Seventy and his wife, Shirley. Elder and Sister Morrison were in attendance to watch their daughter, Sandra Misinchuk, graduate.

Conducting the commencement exercises was LDS Business College Pres. Stephen K. Woodhouse, who was accompanied by his wife, Sytske. In his opening remarks, Pres. Woodhouse offered a special welcome to four professors from the International University of Linguistics and Economics in Minsk, Byelorussia. Through the efforts of the Humanitarian and Welfare Services of the Church, Lubof Alezandrova, Ludmila Antonasheeva, Tamara Suegonyako and Natalya Chaowsova will study American business practices at LDS Business College throughout the summer and then return home to help their country make a transition to a market-driven economy.

In his commencement remarks, President Packer related how a few years ago, a young man came asking for his counsel. "He had learned of a position available in a profession for which he was evidently well qualified but in which he had very little experience.

"He'd been out of school for some few years, and he wanted my counsel on whether or not he should make application for this position. He told me how concerned he was over his circumstance and how really unhappy he was.

" `I am just not getting anywhere,' he kept repeating. `I am just not getting anywhere.'

"This was a fine man. He was trim and impressive in appearance. He was obviously able and intelligent - fine moral character. Yet 10 years after graduation, he kept saying, `I am just not getting anywhere.'

"Near the close of the interview, I asked him a question - the same question that I pose to you on your graduation night. `Where is anywhere?' Where is this anywhere that he was not getting?

"How do you get anywhere? Through education? Through scholarship? Is it an academic light that leads the way? Will your degree, your diploma, your grades get you `anywhere?' "

President Packer then spoke of a time when he and his wife sought the counsel of Elder Harold B. Lee, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, on a choice they were facing. Elder Lee said, "Boyd, you must learn to walk to the edge of the light and a few steps into the darkness, and then a light will go before you."

"He was telling us that we had to have faith, that we had to move ahead," President Packer recalled. "And our life has been a repetition of that, coming to the edge of the light, wondering what was ahead, learning after prayer and study to take steps into the darkness, and always the light would turn on."

Continuing, President Packer counseled: "I have lived long enough to see what success is and what it can be and what it isn't. If you just remain a halfway decent Latter-day Saint and keep the commandments, you can be happy and you will be somebody.

"It may well be that you are never in the newspaper. You may never receive honors and awards and achievements that are recognition by the world. But each of you can do that thing that is most worth doing, and that's the thing that all of you, I'm sure, want to do, and that is to find a companion, to be married and to raise a family and to struggle, going step by step, periodically, to the edge of the light and into the darkness.

"Oh, if you only knew who you are. You are somebody. Each of you is a son or daughter of God," President Packer again affirmed. "He will answer your prayers. He will watch over you. He will bless you, . . . and you will accomplish that which we are ordained to accomplish in this life, to be tested."

Honored as the 1995 Distinguished Alumnus was Regina W. Klitgaard, a 1984 graduate of the college in data processing. She was a student body officer and received an Award of Excellence for Outstanding Leadership Achievement in Student Government. She completed a bachelor's degree in family living at BYU in 1989 and earned membership in the National Key Honor Society and the Sigma Tau chapter of the Omicron Nu National Honor Society. After graduation, she was an administrative assistant to the press secretary to former Utah Gov. Norman H. Bangerter. She was later administrative assistant to Gov. Michael O. Leavitt. Today, Sister Klitgaard and her husband, Jeff, live in Colorado Springs, Colo., with their two children.

Providing music for the graduation was the LDS Business College Institute Choir.