forget-me-not

It is so strange to be home. Granted, I love, love, love being here, but it is still weird. I was making myself dinner last night and I kept opening the wrong drawer for pots and pans. I forgot how to work our remote control, I forgot how to use our home PC because I have a Mac at school, I forgot there was such a thing as water pressure for showers, but in between all of that forgetting, today I remembered who I am. BYU is so big. I’m from a little town with a little high school and a very small ward. It was hard not to stick out at church or in classes. But at BYU I just get lost in the sea of girls and I just let myself fade into the background. I sit quietly, I don’t do anything wrong, I don’t really talk to anyone, I’m just there. I was beginning to think that that is who I really am. But today at my home ward, I found myself all giggly and peppy again. I cannot even begin to tell you how refreshing it was to feel that again. What makes people act so different at college? I feel like most people go from shy to outgoing, but I took the opposite route. I even told one of my home friends that I’m pretty quiet at school and she was truly shocked. English is the only class I talk in, probably because it is such a small class and it's full of only freshman which seems more safe to me. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen when I leave here again and go back to school. Will I bring a little more of myself with me or just leave it all here in Lake Oswego?

They Want Us in White

BYU gets a bad rap as it is with all the married folk with strollers and hand holding. So the stacks of Bridal Guide in the WIlk and around campus just make it even worse. What is the point of BYU supplying them anyway? For those of us who aren’t married, they just stress us out. Is it a hint that we need to get married faster because we are either single and lonely anyway or dating and the guy is the one who hasn’t popped the question. Why all the pressure? COllege is tough enough has it is. Why not have stacks of Ensign magazines or LDS living stacked in the Wilk? For the women who are engaged and looking for bridal tips they are smart enough to use the internet and I feel like there is always a bridal fair going on somewhere in Provo. Let the women at BYU relax and lets keep the campus a place of learning and not a place of breeding.

Dish Duty

There is no way words can explain what our kitchen has been like this last week, but I will put forth my best effort.  

It all began with putting on a dinner for another apartment of boys.  Cute right?  We were being nice and all by feeding these boys who normally live off of frozen pizzas.  Well, it comepletely back fired. No one did any dishes that night.  The sink was overflowing with dirty pots, pans, and all the normal silverware and dishes.  By wednesday, I was eating my morning cereal out of tupperware and borrowing spoons from other apartments.  By thursday the stench in the kitchen was so bad no one would go in there unless they desperately had to.  Instead of doing homework at the kitchen table, the girls went out to the lobby.  I usually wash my face in the kitchen sink because I hate waiting for the bathroom to open up, well now I was forced to use the bathroom in the basement.  

Each day we all said "okay, cleaning party!"  But nothing ever happened.  I finally was just too disgusted and really didn't want to study for my biology test today, so I started cleaning.  The sinks would barely drain.  One was filled with noodles from the dinner a week before and the other just had random pieces of food clogging it up.  I filled the dishwasher the best I could and then tried to drain the sink.  There were still at least 4 loads to be made, but I took the dishes out of the sink to clean it out.  I turned on the garbage disposal, but nothing happened. Usually when i flip that switch i feel all warm and cozy inside because the grossness just all disappears.  This time, nothing happened.  I was quite distraught.  

Long story short, there was a spoon jammed between the blades.  It took me about ten minutes, but I finally snapped it in half and got it out.  Our kitchen still smells funky and there are still plates and bowls that you can pick up by the fork or spoon that is solidified to it with food.  

Welcome to the Big League

I never wrote any missionaries in high school, I didn’t even write my own brother, (sorry, Andrew).  But at BYU, writing letters is the biggest sporting event for single women.

RECRUITING:  Girls, especially freshmen girls, have to be recruiting their missionaries all year long.  The more guys they are friends with now, the more missionaries they can write next year, or if they’re really lucky, next semester.

CONDITIONING AND PRACTICE:  The goal is to send out as many letters a week as possible, so you must condition yourself to keep writing through hand cramps by remembering,  “pain is weakness leaving the body.”  Whatever your decoration style; stickers, stencils, or just goofy sketches, you have to hone those skills before you can put them in the game to play.  You have to know at exactly what time the mailman will arrive and how much postage it takes to get to every country in the world.  When you’re in the 4^th quarter and the letter score is tied between roommates, there’s no time to call your mommy and ask her, you need to know your stamps. 

GAME TIME:  It’s all about the letters.  Each one, depending on how far it traveled, gives you more points in the minds of your girlfriends.  MTC letters are sort of worthless, but Belgium, Australia, Peru, now those are what you read over and over again in front of your roommates as they are trying to study.  You giggle and sigh and then offer if they would like to read your letter while they wait for theirs.

SHAKE HANDS: If a girl is lucky, she can play in the Big League for about three years.  But once all those missionaries come home and they’re done shaking hands and back to bear hugs and dating, girls realize that the game is still on and the number of letters doesn’t deem the winner.  The one who gets a ring on her finger first takes home the trophy.

 

3:21

Last Friday, I was walking through Brigham Square and heard the song “Everything” by Michael Buble being played over the speakers.  This was not the first time I had heard this song, but it was the first time I really had a chance to listen to it.  “And I can't believe, uh that I'm your man, And I get to kiss you baby just because I can. Whatever comes our way, ah we'll see it through, And you know that's what our love can do.”  Lyrics like these are enough to make any girl melt.  And with that tune and Michael’s voice, you’re sure to find puddles of women all over.  All love songs have so much rhetoric.  I’m not sure about the guy perspective, but girls everywhere just listen to these songs over and over.  Michael’s tool is his words and the effect is thousands of girls lost in their imaginary worlds with Prince Charming for three minutes and twenty one seconds.  He obviously uses pathos to get that emotional connection with his listeners.  Even if a girl hasn’t had that kind of relationship, we have all seen enough chick flicks to know that we want to be “everything” to someone someday.  

WITTSAT

Most people come to college thinking they need dedication and hard work to succeed.  Some kids go even as far as taking multiple AP classes to give them the “step up” they think they will need.  These people soon realize that college is about only two things, none of which is taught in any AP class: acronyms and stairs. 

As a Freshman, finding your way around campus is difficult enough because the it’s so much larger than our high schools.  But to make things even worse, no one even knows the names of the buildings, just their acronyms; the JKB, the JSB, the JFSB, the MARB, the HFAC, and the CB are among the many.  I just started to wrap my mind around them all when I went to a retreat with RHA where I learned about OTMs, NRHH, and IACURH.   Do we really come to college to get too lazy to say complete names?

The stairs here can be sort of ridiculous.  One or two are fine, but when the time comes that you find yourself at the field house with your laptop in hand and a bag full of books and you look up at that mountain of stairs, you will wish you took more PE and less AP classes.  

Despair.com

http://despair.com/laziness.html 

The tool is misdirection and effect is humor.  This is obviously ethos because laughter is an emotion.  This is a successful add because it made me laugh out loud, and I rarely laugh out loud at written things.  This entire site, which was introduced to me by a few very nice boys who have too much time on their hands, is very funny.  It takes the inspirational posters and turns them into depressing statements.  This Laziness one in particular is great because we have been told forever the statement of "Success is a Journey, Not a Destination," but we never think to ourselves "stop."  We have all been through journeys of different sizes, and we know that we shouldn't just stop, but we laugh at the idea anyway.

I love paper towels.

I am sort of a germ phob.  Saliva freaks me out, as well as even brushing up against people I don’t really know in crowds.  Now, there are good days and bad days with that.  Sometimes I find it excruciatingly hard to be within 2 feet of someone, even my favorite people in the world, and other days I’m just fine sitting side by side.  To come to college and share an apartment with five other girls is a tad rough on me psychologically, for obvious reasons.  Some girls just don’t know how to deal with their own hair.  They let it flow down the drain in the shower.  Now, that’s all fine and dandy except for the fact that our drainage at Heritage is very poor.  The shower fills like a tub.  We have two showers: the tub-shower has a huge showerhead that all my roommates love.  They say it’s like being in a rain forest.  I don’t really understand that.  Hopefully there are no animals or plants growing in there, at least yet, but I guess it could be considered a rain forest because it can’t drain so you step in and you’re already ankle deep in a river.  Now, I am a beast in comparison to my other roomies.  I’m only like 5’8’’ maaaaaybe 5’9’’, but my other roommates average 5’4’’.  The “rain forest” showerhead would smack me in the forehead, so I prefer the other shower.

The kitchen is a whole other story.  Girls eat so much.  The dishwasher is full all the time, so dishes just start to accumulate all over.  Then it turns into this big scary monster so no one even wants to go near it, we just set our dishes down as a sacrifice and run.  Talk about gross, our hand towels.  No one has decided to wash them yet, so they just kinda linger around the kitchen and they’re always wet.  I won’t even touch them any more because I’m afraid of where they’ve been. But I have found my solution, paper towels.  Yes, I may be killing trees, but at least paper towels are clean and keep me and my germ-phobic self happy. 

What? Something Interesting About Myself?

All of my teachers in smaller classes ask us to go around the room and one at a time say our name, where we are from, and something interesting about ourselves.  But what qualifies as interesting?  I have heard the blandest and the most ridiculous answers during the first few days of class.   What are people thinking when they make up their mind about what to say?  Are they thinking of the cutest response so that the boy three rows over remembers them?  Are they just trying to get through class by choosing something simple?  Or are they trying to impress everyone?  We all have absurd things to say about our selves, but most of us don’t say them, or at least tone them down. 

Even though people don’t want to admit it, there is this underlying competition among the class to get the best response.  Some people decide they would rather forfeit than step on the court and play the game, so they give a bland answer like “I like to sleep.”  Well duh, everyone likes to sleep.  Some people try to impress the class and try for the “oohs” and “ahhs.”  So they say they’re related to some apostle or prophet, if you’re playing with Mormons that’s a three point shot, if you’re out in the real world you’re benched.  Others overshoot the “interesting” concept and just disturb the class.  I heard a girl say she has kissed Michael Jackson’s giraffes.  No one really knew what she meant and no one knew anything about these giraffes so she got the polite nod from the class; air-ball.   Other students try to shock everyone.  When it comes to the shock factor, kids usually turn to their joints.  So what if you can dislocate an appendage or pop your joints out of their sockets?!  The only response you get is “DO IT!”  So when you say you have double-jointed shoulders, all you really want to do is stop the class and show everyone how “cool” you are because you were born as a mutated child.  No one really cares nor does anyone really want to see it.   Half court shot and miss.

(To be honest, I do have really gross, messed up thumbs that don’t allow me to give a “thumbs-up”.  So maybe I’m just jealous that everyone else’s joints expand their range of motion and make them seem cool while mine restrain me and I am stuck having to give the “okay” sign instead of the thumbs-up all my life.)

Boys in the Dorm, Even After Hours

Three days ago we were six normal girls living in room 88 of Penrose. We talked about our home lives, what we did in high school, and what we wanted from our college education. We talked about what callings we wanted in the ward and what we like to eat for dinner. But just three days later boys have taken over our apartment. They are there all the time. They make us stay up later, study less, and they are there even as we drift off to bed. Now, I wish they were actually there, but they exist only in every conversation and in every decision; when we leave for class, what we do at night, where we go for lunch, when we buy our groceries. Everything.
72 hours was all it took to turn six bright, 18-year-old young women into blubbering teeny boppers who seemed to be playing with their Ken dolls just a month before. We know we’re ridiculous, but that doesn’t stop us.
I write this wondering what happens in the abyss that is a guy’s dorm. Do guys just not talk or what? We are over in our building freaking out over the pointless things while guys seem to be sitting on their couches playing video games and eating their Top Ramen. Do guys ever take the extra long way back just to glance into a window hoping to see a certain girl? Do guys ever talk about a girl they’re never even met, but just noticed in class or in the ward? Do guys ever find it hard to concentrate in class with that one girl sitting in their view?  Why all the secrets, boys? It’s time to tell all.  Fess up and blog.

The Ovens Cook the Honor Code

The ovens in the dorms are ridiculous.  

First of all, they get way too hot.  How am I supposed to make a decent cookie or muffin if the oven temperature gage lies to me!  I mean, we are at Brigham Young University here, and honesty is very important and I believe it is a large part of the honor code.  How are we as students supposed to follow the honor code if our kitchen utilities don't even do it?  I mean seriously, 350 turns to 375 and those 25 degrees are the difference between a fluffy, soft cookie and a stiff, dry one.  There should at least be a warning sticker on the ovens to all of the psychotic bakers like me.  

Oh, and my oven light doesn't even work.  So not only do I have to adjust the temperature accordingly for all of my recipes but I can't even check up on my babies while they are maturing into their sweet selves.  Why don't I just open the oven door and to see them? Well, like any REAL baker knows, when the oven door opens too much heat escapes and that will cause disruption to the baking process.