When I was in high school, I took an aptitude test in the tenth grade. When the score came back, the school counselor called me into her office. I remember her asking me what I was planning to do after high school

I stood up tall and said, “I am going to Brigham Young University.”

I remember she took her glasses and put them on as if to get another look. Then she said, “My dear, I do not think you will make it at the university. You received 14 on the English section of the test, and that is just not high enough to get you into college. You got 98 on figuring things out, so the test suggests that you would be a very good auto mechanic.”

A friend asked me this week if I would write an article on how I got from “auto mechanic” to a New York Times bestseller and an eight-year contract on the NBC “Today Show.”

An article published in the December, 1990, Ensign Magazine shares some of the things I did to get through school:

“My parents were wonderful,” Dian says as she flashes her famous smile. “They were so supportive. Knowing my academic limitations, they helped me get through.

“Even in college, my mother and father would spend huge chunks of time on the weekends helping me with my reading and writing. They would drive from Salt Lake to Provo and read to me on the weekends to help me get through. I worked both hard and strategically to understand what I needed to know and how to get there; fortunately, my parents always encouraged me even when I would get a D in a class every once in a while.

“One thing I did in college was to always analyze a class before I signed up for it to determine the amount and kind of reading required, the number of papers I would have to write, the kinds of tests given, and the approach of the professor. Most of my information came from students who had taken the class. On a really hard class I would talk to several students. I then sign up for the instructor I thought I could pass the class and get the best grade. I remember that in a very difficult upper level foods class that required a lot of chemistry knowledge I used my technique and got the second highest grade in the class.”

“For particularly challenging classes, I’d try to take a class with a friend so I’d have someone to study with. It helped a lot. Plus, I would go to a classroom and fill the chalkboards with the theories, formulas, or main ideas, to give myself a visual image of how they all fit together as I knew I learned best when I could see what I needed to know. It worked.”

“Another technique Dian used during her college years revealed yet another hint of her potential as the “First Lady of Creativity,” as some refer to her: she would study the way her teachers tested. Once she saw what teachers based their tests on – lecture notes, chapter review pages of the text, whatever – that is what she would focus on in her studies.”

As I look back in my years at the university, I realize that there are many ways to learn. I wasn’t great at school as it is more of a left-brain experience. It was my right-brain abilities that came into play when I became a home economics teacher at Orem Junior High after graduating from BYU.

I did not teach from books but from experience. If I taught a unit on outdoor cooking, I got my students out of class and we went to the mountains to cook out. Fortunately my principal, Bennett Nielson, loved the way I taught and gave me a double green light to give my students learning experience instead of rote reading assignments.

After three years of teaching, I was given a scholarship by the home economics department because of my innovative classroom management and creative teaching. This allowed me to go back and get my master’s degree.

I once again struggled with classroom learning but managed to write my thesis on how to teach outdoor cooking in the classroom. Home economic teachers from all over the state of Utah came to learn what I had created in my junior high teaching.

The class was taught through special courses and conferences at BYU. The director gave me the use of his secretary, who had been one of my campers at the Brighton Girls Camp where I had been director. She loved my ideas and took what I wrote and polished it for publication.

I went to BYU Press to see if they would print my manual. They told me that if I would sign a paper saying that I would purchase any that did not sell, they would print 400. I remember the amount was as much as I made in a year.

I decided that nothing ventured was nothing gained, and I signed the paper. I then went out and got myself a job traveling with BYU Education Weeks, where I traveled all over the country for the next 6 summers presenting with educators such as Steven Covey, Cleon Skousen and Avard Fairbanks.

On March 28, 1974, forty years ago, I remember standing at BYU and watched as my first copies of Roughing it Easy came off the press.

An idea flashed through my head and I said to myself, “I wonder if this book will change my life.”

It was just one year and two months after that when I stood on the stage of NBC’s Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” where I entertained him and an audience of millions and showed them how to start a fire with steel wool and batteries, how to boil water in a paper cup and how to cook eggs and bacon in a paper bag.

In the weeks to follow, Roughing it Easy went to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and the door to media entertainment opened wide. I stepped into a career that would take me to appearing on NBC’s Today Show with Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley, and Willard Scott for eight years, then to regular appearances on ABC’s Home Show for six years.

Then I went to Home and Family, which now plays on the Hallmark Channel, where I still appear on the show that is taped at Universal Studios.

Now I see that I was smart all the time but my intelligence was not through book learning and rote memorization – it was in experiencing life and sharing that with audiences around the world.

Next week I will travel to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and spend that week talking about the journey to success and how to create fun with your families and friends with members of the LDS Church. I will also be a speaker at the Annapolis Chamber of Commerce on How to get a Million Dollar Worth of Free Publicity and how to prepare their businesses for success in the media.

Life had a different path for me than being an auto mechanic. I am so glad I did not listen to the school guidance counselor, but that I was able to listen to my inner voice and follow a different direction.