I’m
eleven years old. I’m hot,
and
I’m bored. I’m always hot and bored when we go to Utah in
the summer.
I
don’t see the point of why we’re here right now. We left
Daddy behind somewhere—Mom says he’s talking to an old
professor of theirs from when she and he went here and that we should
let them catch up.
Well,
they should catch up more quickly, I think. I’m starting to get
bored with the fountain. My sisters and I are playing on it, walking
on top of its walls and pretending to push each other in. The spray
from the water feels good on our hot, flushed faces. We’re in a
courtyard of some kind, surrounded by a huge stone building. I think
it’s an office building or something. I kind of like it, I
think, looking up at the rows and rows and rows of windows above me.
Mom
calls to my sisters and me from where she’s been sitting at a
metal picnic table reading a book. Daddy is back, carrying a
cardboard box. There’s a man with him who’s wearing
glasses. He seems friendly, and I say hello back when he says hello
to us, but I don’t pay much attention to him, because—treats!
Daddy pulls these huge square brownies out of the box. A thick layer
of brownie, with a layer of green stuff (it smells minty) and then
chocolate frosting on top. I can’t believe he and Mom are
letting me and my sisters have a whole one each.
They’re massive!
My
sisters and I sit beside one another next to the fountain, chewing
our brownies happily (delicious, a perfect mix of chocolate and minty
goodness) and kicking our legs back and forth while Mom, Daddy, and
the man continue to visit – grown-up stuff. I hope we come back
here again sometime. These brownies are awesome.
I’m
fourteen years old, and I am little.
The campus buildings around me seem to sprawl out forever. If I come
to this university one day, I’m sure there will be no way I’ll
ever find my way around. I’ll have to carry a map with me
wherever I go.
The
tour guide, who looks super
grown-up,
maybe as old as nineteen, points out different buildings as she
drives the golf cart past...the Joseph Smith Building, the David O.
McKay Building, the Maeser Building. I stare at them as we pass,
forgetting their names almost as soon as she says them. I’ll
have to remember the names of different buildings?
College
is going to be so
much
harder than high school, when I do get there. But that’s
forever away, so I don’t have to worry about that too much yet.
My
dad leans forward from his seat behind me and says quietly to me,
“Later, we’ll go to the Creamery to get some ice cream.”
Creamery?
Right here on campus? That sounds great.
BYU is like its own little self-contained city, I decide. I also
decide that I like it. It’s cute. I could totally see myself
here, I think, watching the students bustling around (though I have
no idea why anyone
would
stick around to go to school in the summer.
I’m
never
going
to do that).
The
students here all look way older than me, but there’s something
about them that makes me feel connected to them, too. In fact, I
think a lot of them look a lot like me in some ways; they dress the
way I dress, act the way I act. They’re kids too, kind of.
As
the tour guide pulls the golf cart in front of the cute brick
building where we began (I think it’s called the Hinckley
Building), I’m already pretty much sold on this college (though
I don’t tell her that). I want to come to this cute little
self-sufficient city with tons of other kids just like me. I don’t
really know what exactly I like so much about it, but I’m
pretty sure about one thing: I feel right at home here. Maybe
someday, I’ll get to come here for school. That would be pretty
sweet.
I’m
seventeen years old, and I’m stressed.
The first semester of senior year is probably the worst thing ever;
on top of all of my homework, I get to fill out college apps, too.
College
apps are stressful, not to mention time-consuming and terrifying. Our
guidance counselor went to all of the senior government classes and
presented us with tons of information on college applications, with
varying degrees of helpfulness; for example, she told us some horror
story about a Dominion student who was a perfect match for her dream
school, but was rejected because she had never made a college visit.
While
typing up my essays for the BYU application, I remember this and my
heart stops. Oh my gosh.
I
never visited BYU! I mean yeah, I made that one visit the summer
before I started high school, but seriously, that was years ago. It
probably didn’t count. They’re probably going to reject
me now, and then my life will be over,
because I honestly don’t know where I’m going to go if
BYU doesn’t accept me.
But
I’m almost done with the application, so there’s no point
in freaking out about it, I tell myself, trying to calm down. I’m
determined to get it in well before the priority deadline; being one
of the first few hundred applications certainly can’t hurt my
chances.
I
can’t help but imagine myself there as I write these
essays—what my life might be like, my roommates, the friends
I’ll have, the classes I’ll take. Obviously these
daydreams are sparkly and perfect, including tons of new friends, BYU
sporting events, parties and dances every weekend, a study abroad,
maybe even a date once in a while. I guess it sounds like the
stereotypical life of a BYU student, but I get excited thinking about
it, picturing myself in places that I vaguely remember from my visit
years ago or from Divine Comedy videos. I don’t think I’ve
ever wanted anything as badly as I want to get into BYU.
I
finally finish the application and, heart hammering, send it off. I
go back to the application home page and read, in the application
status box that previously read Incomplete
the
word Submitted.
Now the wait begins...
I’m
seventeen years old, and my life is made.
I’m
at Dominion’s production of Pippin
with
some friends, but I’m not paying attention to the play or the
people around me; I’m bouncing up and down in my seat; my legs
are jittery, my heart is pounding, and my mind is racing far from
here. My thoughts keep going back to the email I got, ten minutes
before the show started, that brought me the wonderful news I’ve
been aching to hear for months.
I’m
now a BYU student! Suddenly, all the cares of the past few months
have melted away, and it has become as though I’m floating on a
cloud. Those shiny daydreams I’ve been living in may as well be
reality, because this fall, I’m
going to BYU!
Over
the next few months, I have to decide where I’m going to live,
register for my classes, and order books. With each new step I take
towards leaving home, the tension and excitement for the fall build,
and the picture I paint of my BYU life becomes more and more
elaborate.
I
know it probably won’t be exactly the way I imagine it, but
there is absolutely nothing that can make me think it’s going
to be anything less than spectacular. Whatever happens now, I’m
in, and different scenarios (and the imagined faces of people I will
meet) keep playing through my head in all their fantastic glory. BYU
is going to be so
much fun.
I can’t wait for August.
I’m
eighteen years old, and I’m ready for an adventure. As the
rental car speeds past the sign at the edge of campus that reads
“Brigham Young University” I feel a little tingly thrill
go through me. I can’t believe this is actually happening.
There’s
a lot to be done. The day before I move into my apartment, my dad
drives me to campus and takes me to the Wilkinson Center (called the
Wilk?); there we get my picture taken for my student ID. Then he buys
me a smoothie from Jamba Juice, which I’ve been wanting to try,
and he shows me around campus a little. He shows me the Wilk and the
Fine Arts Center, and we walk past the library (which I remember
clearly from last time) and to the Joseph Fielding Smith Building,
which is where, apparently, I’ll be having a lot of my classes
as an English major. He says some of the buildings have changed from
when he was here, but he knows his way around better than I do. All
of this seems so big.
I
follow him and hope I won’t get lost on my first day of school.
The
next day is even busier. I have to check into my apartment and get
the keys for my mailbox and my room; I have to move all of my things
into my apartment and set up my bed. My parents and all of my sisters
help me with this. I meet two of my roommates, Tiffanie and Kaitlynn,
and I try not to feel like it’s the first day of EFY.
After
I set up house, my family and I walk around campus. My parents take
us inside the Joseph Fielding Smith Building and introduce us to a
couple of their old professors from when they went here. I recognize
one of them. I think I met him on a previous trip here; I was maybe
eleven then, and I’m pretty sure there were BYU mint brownies
involved.
We
walk around some more. I know I probably have that doe-eyed look of a
new freshman; I try to play it down, but I just can’t stop
staring at everything and trying to take it all in. Everything seems
so alive,
like
there’s so much going on, especially in the Wilk. We bump into
a couple of older students we know from back home; this is good for
me, because I’m starting to feel the beginnings of fear. I
didn’t think about what it would be like when my family
actually left me.
Saying
good-bye to them is both easier and harder to do than I thought it
would be. I don’t want to, not really, but I know they have to
go eventually; and go they do.
And
now I’m on my own, with a huge campus to explore and wondering
what it is I’ve gotten myself into.
I’ll
be nineteen at the end of this month, and I can’t believe how
far I’ve come from this time last year. Now that I’m at
BYU and have gotten used to living out here, it’s funny to
remember what I used to imagine BYU was like.
Part
of it is just the sheer physicality of being
here. There are always discrepancies between the way you imagine a
place and the way it actually is, especially now that I know the
buildings and the campus grounds, how they’re laid out and
which of the buildings I become familiar with, and which of the ones
I never go near.
And
a sunny, sparkly social life? Well, yeah, I have one, but it’s
not excessively
sunny or sparkly. Right now I’m sitting at a table in the law
library, trying to finish up this column so I can do my homework and
study for my midterms. I do a lot of homework on the weekends, and it
is a very different kind of work than I did in high school—even
more so when I come to realize that a lot of what I learned in high
school is irrelevant here. There aren’t dances every
week, though there are a lot; and if you want to have the kind of
college life where you go out and party every night (or even just
every weekend), you’d better be prepared to forfeit a lot of
precious homework time and a good GPA.
And
yet I can’t describe how much I love BYU and how much better it
is to be here for real. The sense of adventure that I always imagined
I’d find here hasn’t diminished; if anything, it’s
grown. There is always something to do, some going-on during the
weekend or some new project to undertake or some club to join. Every
day you meet new people; every day, new opportunities arise to snatch
at. And there are always new challenges to beat daily.
And
even though it’s not the BYU I imagined when I was younger,
somehow the differences of the reality merge with my imagination from
back then, and then I can make it my own anyway. It all depends on my
perspective.
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