Inventory

As a "homebody," I generally like to be at home, around my family. I would much rather sit at home with a book & watch my mother in the kitchen than go hang out with my friends. Strange for a teenager, I know. But I am very attached to my family and I don't like being away from them. So to come all the way to Utah for school was a big leap for me! I was terrified of leaving, and I thought I was going to be beside myself with homesickness. But I have been very pleasantly surprised to find that I truly haven't missed them any more than if I gone to EFY for a week. Admittedly, the first week was rough, especially since school hadn't started and I had nothing to occupy my time. But as the school year has gotten under way, I have filled my days with various things that prevent me from ever missing/thinking about my family too much. I actually thought I would be spending all my time curled up in my room just crying and calling home, but that is not the case! I am constantly doing something - reading textbooks, writing notes, taking quizzes, organizing sacrament hymns, rugby practice, or even just watching a show online. So I guess I do spent a lot of time in my room, just not the way I had expected. . . This is definitely better than I had dared to hope!

There are a couple of things that are different/harder than I had expected. For one, everyone I know told me that it would be so easy to make friends down here, that I would have too many friends than I knew what to do with. I was told people just randomly started up a conversation and by the end you were exchanging phone numbers and setting up play dates. I suppose this is true to a certain extent, but it's not quite how people described it. I will sit by someone in a class and we can talk and get along and things but at the end we go our separate ways and I never see that person again because the class is so big! It is sort of sad when you meet someone that you kind of like and think 'Hey I'd like to be friends with them!' And then that's the last you see of them. . . That has happened a couple of times. I was also quite disappointed to find out how far I REALLY live from campus! We have friends back home who are @ BYU and they told us Wyview was a 20min walk to the centre of camps. That is a blatant lie! It takes me a good 30minutes to walk from my house to my first class in the JKB. Sheesh. The only good thing is that it is good exercise for me, which is crucial to my health (I am a diabetic). Plus I now greatly admire people who don't own cars and walk everywhere!

If I could change one thing about my experience here @ BYU so far, I think it would be one of three things: I would either move my family down here, be able to have the same experiences closer to home, or drag a friend down here. I think if I had someone who was a true friend (MY OWN AGE!) then I would look forward to school a lot more. Even if we weren't in any classes together, it would be nice to have a lunch buddy or just see someone around campus. I think I would also rearrange my schedule a little bit. All of my classes this semester are on MWF, excluding the homework lab on Thursday afternoons, and it can get a bit tiring. And then on TTH, I basically have nothing urgent to do and it feels like my entire day is wasted. So I would probably change things up a bit.