Well, after a two week long break, I have now started my next adventure. BYU. I got here on Sunday night and went to my first two classes yesterday: Microbiology and Tennis. Then today I had my first Abnormal Psychology class. They weren't too terrible.
Microbiology is Monday through Friday from 9:00-10:30 am. That kind of feels like a lot of Biology for me, but it means by Biology requirement for SVU will be filled in 6 weeks so I can't complain. My teacher is a PhD student so he's super young and super chill. That's kind of nice. I was worried he would be old and intense and scary. So far I haven't understood hardly anything that we have read or learned about, (I'm an FCD major not a Science major) but the way the class is set up I don't think it will be too hard to do well in. Plus, as much as I like to get A's, it's not super important for me this summer because when I transfer my credits back to SVU they won't affect my GPA at all; I will just get the credit for taking them. So that's fun to just need to pass and not necessarily get the best grade possible (thought I promise I will still do my best, Mom...don't stress).
I have my Beginning Tennis class on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5:00-6:50 pm. Two hours is a long time for a class, but because it's a tennis class I don't think that will be bad at all. It will just feel like tennis practice in high school. Anything less than that would probably feel really short. My tennis class is taught by a girl who is working on her Masters I believe. So she is also really young and chill. The majority of the class has played tennis once or twice, so it's going to be very beginning. When she was telling us how the class would go, I was tempted to switch to Intermediate Tennis instead because I really am looking to get better and not just get an easy PE credit. However, Beginning is a pass/fail class and Intermediate is graded. I really don't want to be graded on how well I play tennis. So I will just stay in Beginning and hope that it is still beneficial to me (I kind of decided that I want to play for SVU next year depending on how this class goes....I have a lot of work to do before then).
Abnormal Psychology is Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:00-6:30 pm. Yes, you read that right. Two and a half hours of psychology folks! I have a thirty minute attention span. This one is going to be a struggle for sure. My teacher is, once again, a PhD student (Is that a common thing? It seems weird to me.) So, young and chill. Today we did an introduction activity thing and then talked about the syllabus for an hour and fifteen minutes. Then he said, "Okay, let's take a ten minute break and then we will come back and start class." Start??? I was done 45 minutes ago! That was super discouraging for me. We ended up getting out at 6:00 because he forgot what time we were supposed to get done. Then he sent us all an email telling us his mistake and assuring us it wouldn't happen again. Great. I think it will be an interesting class, but he is going to have to be suuuuper entertaining if he wants me to listen to him talk about Abnormal Psychology for 2 1/2 hours every other day. Ugh. Also, for this class we are required to do 11 hours of service at the Utah State Hospital (apparently "state hospital" equals "mental hospital" who knew?) When he first sent us the email telling us this, I kind of freaked out a little bit. But now I am thinking that it actually might be pretty cool. I really need some hands-on experience in this stuff, and it will be cool to be volunteering with people who have the mental disorders that we are learning about. We will see how that goes.
In other news, BYU is really big and really different than SVU. It's definitely a new experience, but I think it's a good one. For some reason I was afraid that I would get into my classes here and be totally freaked out because the professor and everyone in the class would be so intellectually above me. I kind of thought I was going to have a Legally Blonde experience and that my first class would go a lot like Elle Woods' first class at law school went. I'm not really sure why I thought that. I guess because SVU is so little and different from most other universities, that I assumed our classes were easier or less scary than a place like BYU. At SVU they are always telling us how rigorous our classes are, and how prepared we will be for grad school by the time we leave, and how much smarter SVU kids are then everyone else. I may have kind of rolled my eyes at that. I believe it a little more now. Not that any of these things are true about me by any means, but I have realized that I have not been getting a baby education from the baby school that I go to. I feel just as comfortable and competent in my BYU classes as I would in my SVU classes. It's also nice that it's Summer semester and I'm taking kind of random classes because my class sizes aren't too much bigger than they would be at SVU. And that's my analysis of my universities.
It's only been two days, but I think that being here has already started to help me realize that SVU was probably the right choice for me. Maybe just because that's where I feel comfortable now, but even with all the stores and restaurants and people and equipment and facilities that are a hundred times nicer and more abundant here than at SVU, I still feel like I could never pick this place over my baby SVU. The other thing is that two years ago when I was finally left alone in my dorm room on the other side of the country for the first time, I was totally fine. I was sad to be away from my family and nervous about classes and making friends and stuff, but I never cried and I just transitioned really smoothly and easily. I haven't had quite the same experience here the last two days. It's weird to me that I can feel so much more homesick and alone when I am 3 hours from home than I did when I was 36 hours from home. I don't know what it is but I feel sooo lonely (probably because I am alone) and it's kind of killing me. I really don't have anyone here. There's a few people in town that I kind of know from high school or through Sam, but no one that I am really close to. I have one roommate, but I'm pretty sure that relationship isn't ever going to evolve into anything more than being roommates. She just graduated so she has lots of friends here already, and she has her mom. Living in our apartment. Which I'm 99% sure the landlord doesn't know about and also 99% sure that it's definitely not allowed. They mostly just stay in her room with the door closed except when they come out to cook. They are Chinese (ironic right?) and her mom doesn't speak any English. The whole thing is pretty awkward. They are both really nice, but it's just a weird situation. Also, I'm not sure what she's doing now that she's graduated, and I don't know what her mom is doing, but they definitely don't have a lot going on because they never leave the apartment. It's weird. I should probably ask the landlord about it, but I don't really want to.
So yes, I am kind of struggling with the loneliness thing. I saw this quote on pinterest today that said, "I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person." I think this is definitely true. I am a pretty big advocate for alone time. I have always enjoyed having a little time to myself once in a while and I'm not one who needs to be surrounded by a huge group of friends before I can do anything. I'm pretty independent. Everything is more fun with people you love, but I have always thought that I was pretty good at the alone thing too. I may have been wrong. Maybe I am defined by other people. Or maybe it just depends on the quantity of the time alone. I can do a few hours or even a whole day completely on my own, but to have only opened my mouth a few times in the last 48+ hours because I literally have no one around to talk to; that's tough. And the hard thing is that tomorrow probably won't be much different. I know that's a terrible attitude, but most people aren't going to walk up to a stranger on campus and say, "Hey! I have no friends down here. Do you want to help me out with that?" And I especially am not one to do that. I hate how shy I get when I am around people that I don't know, especially when I don't have anyone that I do know with me. But I just don't really know how I could ever change that. I'm not saying that I am going to spend the entire summer all alone. I will meet some people and hopefully make some new friends. I am just saying that the whole thing is turning out to be harder than I was expecting.
Wow sorry. That was kind of a less-than-uplifting post. That's just where I'm at right now. It feels good to get it out there. Now I am going to go to bed so that I can do a better job of staying awake in Biology than I did today. Hopefully I start getting to know some people down here but, until then, I will just keep holding out for the weekend when I get to see some friends again.
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