the provo effect

I've come to realize, after about 4 years living here, that Provo has a bizarre affect on the mind. It changes your mentality of things, and often times you start to second guess the way you view the world and even the way you think.

I was talking to my sister about this recently, and realized there is a sort of pattern that comes out of it over time. Although 4 years in college, let alone Provo, can drive a person mad, it is somewhat necessary in order to bring yourself full circle. Let me expound...

After you graduate from high school, you are confident and excited to take on the world. Basically you feel like a badass- you WILL conquer the world. Then you get to Provo, and suddenly the insecurities take over. Freshman year is a blast and you make lots of friends, but you are removed from your "home base foundation" you grew up with, and you have to start rediscovering yourself altogether. Also, in Utah you are surrounded by millions of Mormons- so if you are one, you inevitably begin to compare yourself to the rest of them. More often than not... at least if you are like me... you may start to think of yourself as a bad person. Inadequate to others' standards. To top things off, you have surely recieved your first F on a test by now, leading you to believe you are stupider than everyone else in the Utah Valley, possibly even the country.

By sophomore year, you've dabbled into the Provo dating scene and either come out with a boyfriend and a marriage proposal (it seems like a very high percentage of girls dropped off about this point...) or a few awkward moments. Lucky me, I came out with both. All your guy friends have ditched out for missions, and you are surrounded by RMs- spiritual giants who again challenge your self-views as a spiritually capable and knowledgeable person. All of a sudden you realize you know relatively nothing of the Gospel. Even if you wanted to go on a mission to try to catch up, it couldn't be for at least another year or two.

Around Junior year, you become fed up with feeling inadequate. You never feel good enough, you don't understand why all you wanna do is hang out with Raj at 7-11 when everyone else is studying, and people are starting to notice when you skip out on the last hour of Church. You realize the only way to figure out where you fit in this mess of a city is to figure out exactly who YOU are and what YOU want. Not what your parents want, your roommates want, the person you're dating wants, and maybe not even what your Bishop wants. All those different requests on your time and ideas start to bog you down and you lose sight of your true goals. What do YOU want?

At this point things might get a little crazy. (Maybe I should only speak for myself on that matter...) You're in a mad hunt to figure yourself out, and next year's graduation begins to loom near. Although mostly you're just confused, and frustrated that you dont really know what's going on, you may become obstinate to outside opinion during this stage. If you're figuring out who YOU are, you can't invite others' inputs, obviously. So you come across a little stubborn, maybe even a tad bitchy.

Finally Senior year arrives. At this point, it's really up to you which direction to go. I don't mean in a matter of like good v bad, or church v no church or anything like that... That decision is yours all along the way. You don't need 4 years of college to get to that point. However, you do have a lot of decisions regarding what to do next. Maybe you've had another marriage proposal or two by this point. Maybe you're considering a mission, if you're a girl, or maybe you have absolutely no idea what you're going to do now (After all, weren't you suppoed to be married by this point???) Hopefully by graduation you have some sort of gameplan. Aside from just a general outline for the next few years of your life, hopefully by this point you have come toward a feeling of completion on this little university journey.

Inevitably, you are a different person. Provo has changed you. It's not just Provo that does it-- if you lived anywhere you would have changed a lot by this point. You are the same at your core, but basically a much more confident version of yourself. You can measure where you stand against "them", and be perfectly alright with it. You can once again enjoy your Diet Coke, squeeze in an occasional R-rated movie, and rant about your views as a Democrat (heaven forbid in Utah!) and not even care how anybody else feels about it! It is quite the invigorating feeling, this new self-acceptance thing. How you measure against anyone else no longer matters, and you are living for yourself, and for your own relationship with God (If, obviously, that is included on the path you choose. Which, hopefully it is.)

This timeline can surely vary by person- some stages may fly by, and others may seem to dwell forever. However, hopefully you come out of it feeling as if you have come full circle, with a deeper understanding and appreciation for yourself. Now is the time to once again feel like a badass. And hopefully this time the feeling lasts.