My Testimonies

For one of my finals, I had to write a column within a certain time limit (1 hour) about a problem here at BYU-Idaho.

Instead of writing a real column, I wrote a series of diary entries from the perspective of a new (and stupid) freshman who starts talking marriage with her home teacher after she dates him for a week and he receives a peaceful feeling when he prays to know if they should be together. (I will probably not get a good grade on this column because I wrote things like "finding my future EC is going to be SO SUPER AWESOME!" This was to make a point, but it was still really badly written.)

Immediately after I emailed this to my teacher, I realized how bitter I've become over certain aspects of this school. I thought to myself that I have, perhaps, lost my testimony of BYU-Idaho.

But then I remembered all the great things about this school and decided that my testimony remains, but only for certain buildings.

My testimony of the Spori building, for example, remains very strong. I love this building, not just because it's the prettiest or the most peaceful or because it's the most technologically advanced (although all those things are true). I love it because of the people who spend their days and weeks and semesters here: the Communication and Art students.

This is the building where Converse high-tops and obscure band tees and black-rim glasses reign, where the news is disseminated, where Macs and Creative Suites and creativity are king. When you are in this building, you are family.

If I could, I would just live here. After all, this is where all of my classes are, where I work, where I go to church. There are comfy couches where I have spent many an afternoon (and even a few nights during semesters when my roommates were less than pleasant). There is a fridge where I keep most of my groceries so that I don't have to leave during the day. There are pretty computers with huge screens. There are free chips and salsa and fun-size Butterfingers. They know me here. I like it.

On the other hand, I have completely lost my testimony of the Kimball building, where everybody has a chip on their shoulder and a demeaning look in their eye. I am also beginning to lose my testimony of the Manwaring Center. Too many ridiculous things happen there. Like Social Dance classes. Also, whenever I'm in there, there is some goon pounding out Jon Schmidt on one of the pianos as though his performance is part of some grand, culture-promoting-between-classes concert series. Worse, there are always people surrounding the piano, encouraging this behavior. Sometimes I throw up in my mouth a little bit in this building.

There are some buildings that I, admittedly, just don't ever go to, like the Romney, the Benson and the Austin. I think these are also the buildings with the good-looking guys in them: engineering guys, science guys, ag guys (who become especially attractive when you're used to seeing only lanky graphic design guys in cardigans and skinny jeans.)

I did come up with a theory, though, on how to maximize your time here at BYU-I. As freshmen, girls should declare majors in engineering, biology or animal science. They should join many study groups and ask for lots of help from male members of the class. After a year of this, they will be married and free to change their major to Child Development or Home and Family Development or University Studies. This way, they can plan a totally stay-at-home-mom-friendly job that will still bring in some money while their husbands are in medical/dental/grad school, like running a preschool out of their home. (Cait, this is not personal.)

For the record, all this bitterness is not coming from being a single senior, which I really like. It's mostly because the administration are a bunch of haters who don't want me to graduate, and a little bit because my roommate, who is a freshman, is trying to decide whether it is too early to start praying about a guy she is "dating." (They have been on 2 dates. And one of them was a lunch date, so that really only counts as a half.)

My Scroll advisor said maybe they can get me a cot for the Scroll office and then I'll never have to leave the Spori. I think he made the offer jokingly, but I'm pretty keen on the idea.