Advantage in the World to Come

D&C 130: 19 "And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his dilligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come."

This scripture has gained a much more immediate meaning to me over the last few weeks.  I have experienced a temporal application of this eternal principle which has strengthened my belief in the truth of this doctrine.  Currently I am taking a math class that seems to be in a different language.  The subject matter is one that I should have learned years ago.  However, my freshman year I never understood this area of math and really slacked off.  I thought that it never was going to matter, and in all my Chemical Engineering classes it hadn't mattered for 6 years. But now that I am preparing for graduate school, everything is coming full circle.  I feel like I am at a significant disadvantage because I never learned what the professor takes for basic knowledge.  But who do I have to blame but myself? I thought that I could hide from my past and that it would never catch up to me.  I thought that 2 years of a faithful mission would allow me to ignore my previous mistakes.  On a very temporal and small scale I am learning now why it is that we should strive to learn eternal truths in this life rather than in the next.  The learning curve is steep and I miss out on the more important lessons because I still haven't mastered the basics.   If we want to be exalted we will have to learn how to love our enemies, either now or in the eternities.  It's better to get a head start now, so that we can focus on our eternal progression afterward.