Note: This is the first 4 days, as the post got a tad long for my liking and I wanted to get something up. The other 6 days will be posted once I finish typing them out.
Welcome Reader, to the inaugural post of my blog that details the good, and occasionally the bad, of what happens to me while I'm out here on my own at Brigham Young University. This blog is mainly intended for my family and therefore will be written with them in mind, but if you got here then I must consider you part of my family in some way! So to start off I'm going to let you in on my take on my first 10 days here at BYU with a day by day recollection of events, but be warned some days are not nearly as fascinating as others. First though, I'm going to explain the title I picked for this blog, because it may confuse some. Due to my choices in high school including Advanced Placement (AP) and Dual/Concurrent Enrollment I graduated high school with 72 credits. This number (since the total amount of credits transferred over to BYU) places me as a junior. But, due to the fact that this is my first term/year at BYU, and I haven't progressed at all in my major specific line I am considered a freshman by my major and those who have been at BYU for multiple semesters.
So I guess I'll start with day 1: June 15th, 2012.
I started the day at my second cousin's house, and once everyone was ready we headed down south and hiked up to Timpanogos Cave and all had a super awesome time doing it. After that, we stopped at Subway on the way to my great aunt Erma's house to pick up the things my daddy bought me while he was still here. After we had loaded up the car with all my junk, my cousins brought me up to Wyview Park, where I am currently living and helped me get it all into my apartment. Later that night I finally met my roommate, who happens to be the Resident Assistant (RA) for this building. It turns out, he's super awesome and I don't think I could have asked for a better roommate for my first term here. It also happened that the other person who was supposed to be my roommate (in the same room), was hired as an RA in Helaman Halls and therefore I still have the "shared" room all to myself.
And then there was day 2, June 16th, 2012:
I actually didn't do very much exciting today, though I did make a batch of super-awesome vanilla cookies. I also got to know my roommate a little better, and met a few people that it turns out I see fairly often. Other than that, I just kinda chilled and got settled in my room.
Day 3, June 17th, 2012 was actually much more exciting as it was my first day at church in my new singles ward, and I must say it was absolutely awesome. The first hour I was able to help pass the sacrament, which made it feel more like home, and then we had some incredible speakers. One of them was one of the daughters of a member of the bishopric, and the other two were really inspiring. During the second hour, the entire ward went up to introduce themselves stating their name, where they are from, how many terms/semesters they've been at BYU, and mission status. Both to my roommate's and my surprise, there were a number of girls who stated that they came here planning to get married, not go on a mission. The second hour ran a little over, so during the abbreviated third hour our Elder's quorum president and one of his counselors taught about the importance of home teaching, especially for all these people who no longer have a father they can call upon for blessings whenever they need. Shortly after church ended, I attended a meeting of a volunteer committee to help plan a combined activity among the wards of Wyview that is happening in mid-July. Directly after that ended, I headed over to ward choir practice, although all those in the meeting were about half an hour late to it. That was probably the second most exciting thing about church that day. After choir practice my roommate tried to make some cookies from a mix, and they ended up sticking to the pan and not rising at all. So, for building meeting which started a couple hours after choir practice, we ended up eating the cookies I had made the day before, along with some of the chunks of cookie made that day. Building meeting was a very interesting experience, as a good majority of the building residents actually showed up, and we all crammed into our apartment. We discussed various things ranging from stud/dud stories to setting up a temple trip as a building. Right after building meeting it was time for ward prayer, where a kid with the same major as me played a nice rendition of a tune from the Lord of the Rings on the saxophone. After ward prayer, I headed back to my apartment and got ready to start classes in the morning.
And then arrived the dreaded day 4, June 18th, 2012, a.k.a. the first day of classes. I had all three of my summer term classes today, Book of Mormon 1 (hereafter abbreviated as BoM1) at 9am, Elementary linear algebra (ELA hereafter) at 10am, and Book of Mormon 2 (BoM2) at noon. BoM1 was an interesting experience, as it was my first class at BYU. I was kind of thrown off, but very excited, when the professor announced we would be singing at least 1 verse of a hymn every class period, as we did that day. We then proceeded to talk about the syllabus, and didn't actually end up talking much at all about the Book of Mormon. Then came ELA, where the professor basically handed us the syllabus and dived straight into the material after pointing out a few key things such as the homework schedule. After spending two dreadful hours talking about matrices and very basic things about them, it was time for BoM2. In BoM2 much like BoM1 we discussed the syllabus and basically the exact same thing we did in BoM1, about how the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. After classes, I took the Ryde Shuttle back home and had a job interview about a possible position at the front desk of the housing office. I passed and will be starting sometime in the middle of July, after that I went home and did some homework and some reading to get caught up on what the professors had assigned to be done by Monday, though most hadn't told the class about them. At 6:30pm, Home evening started, and it was a combined ward event. We had some tasty taco salad in a buffet-style line, and then proceeded to play some get to know you games. Afterward, we had Banana splits (or just plain ice cream if you so desired), and I went back to finish up my readings that needed to be done for class in the morning.
Part 2 coming as soon as I finish typing it...
-- Jordan L. Nielson
Edit: You can now find Part 2 here: First 10 Days part 2
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