BYU Here I Come

Tearfully I said good-bye to Jim and began packing to go off to college. Several friends from school and I rented a little old run-down house (all we could afford) about a mile from campus. None of us had a car so we needed a place within walking distance. A few days before school started we took in a "cutie", Carolyn Joyner, from South Carolina who was desperately looking for a place to live. She was really the "life" in that old house, and we learned to love her a lot. We would take her home to Salt Lake with us on the weekends that we went.

There was no pre-registering on phone back in 1952, and no computers. We had to stand in long lines to sign up for each individual class, and, of course, by the time you got to the front of the line the class would be filled and you'd have to start all over trying to get into an alternate class. By the time you finished registering your schedule didn't even resemble the original "perfect" one you had planned. Those early 7:00 AM classes that you definitely did not want were all too prevalent, and the time between classes was ridiculous not to mention the distance from one class to another. Back then classes were still held on "lower campus" which was the old original BYU building on University Avenue which I think has now been preserved and turned into a library. Upper campus was composed of the Maeser Administration Building, the Brimhall Building (library), the Joseph Smith Building, and the brand new Science Building...the one with the Foucault pendulum. There were a few miscellaneous small buildings that housed classrooms and some dorms (I think Helaman Halls). That was it!

School was divided into quarters rather than semesters, so you were able to take more classes during the regular school year. Some of the classes I remember taking that year were Spanish, English, bacteriology, geology, sociology, interior decorating, American history, and Book of Mormon. I think my favorite was geology. I still remember a great deal of what I learned and find I still notice and am able to identify many geological features in the environment. I loved the field trips we took around the Salt Lake valley where so many geological events occurred.
My favorite professor was Marden Clark, my English teacher. Actually he is the only one I remember by name. That should say something. I really don't like the writing part of English, and that is probably all we did the first quarter. And literature isn't my favorite, either, and that was mainly the second quarter's curriculum. I had to write my very first research paper that year in English, and my second for sociology. Talk about being thrown into the fire! I had never had to do a research paper in high school as you do now, so I was oblivious as to how much work it was, especially because of what was expected on a college level. Writing that paper for English was the hardest thing I had to do that year, but it was what gave me the greatest feeling of accomplishment as well. The subject I chose to write on was, "The Effects of Literature on the Civil War". I still have that hand written paper...yes, hand written. There were no computers then, and I didn't own a typewriter nor did I have access to one. Not that it would have done me any good, anyway, because I couldn't type. But can you imagine writing a long paper with footnotes by hand trying to anticipate how much room you were going to need at the bottom of each page for footnotes? It was CRAZY! But I did it, and I even got an "A". The sociology paper wasn't quite as bad because it came later on in the quarter, and now I had had a little experience. The subject I chose for that one was "Man's Pugnacious Nature as a Cause of War". I think I still have that paper as well.

At the beginning of the school year I applied to join the Sponsor Corp, a women's service auxiliary to the Air Force ROTC there on campus. It required filling out an application form, going through several interviews, and then finally meeting with a board of high ranking officers in the ROTC for a final selection. There were only a few spaces available for freshman applicants so the competition was pretty tough. I was lucky enough to make the cut and was issued my formal uniform. As I said, this was a service organization, and as such we ushered at school events, helped with activities sponsored by our male counterparts, help plan service projects on campus, and interacted with other Air Force ROTC units at the University of Utah. We even had social activities with them, one of which they matched up the Sponsors at BYU with the cadets at the University of Utah for a dance...you might say a "blind date" affair. That was interesting! The only thing I remember about my date was that he was barely as tall as I was...maybe even a little shorter. I was a little uncomfortable with that, but I had fun anyway.

It wasn't long into the year that we met several young men who lived in the house next to ours. They let us know that they weren't eating too well, so we arranged to feed them the evening meal for a price, of course. They were willing to pay thinking that they would get a good home made meal each night. What they didn't know was that none of us were the greatest cooks, even if we had the time to actually cook. I remember eating and preparing meals that weren't so great. I think our guests soon realized that, too, and made other arrangements. I think they did meet one of their secondary goals, however....that of getting to know several of my roommates well enough to ask for dates...which they did.

Did I have a career interest when I started college? Yes, I had a goal major that I knew was not available at BYU, which was Occupational Therapy. Through counseling I was informed where I would have to go to complete that major, the closest of which was the University of Colorado. I knew my chances of making it that far were pretty slim, but I decided that I could at least finish my basic requirements at BYU. And I was on my way.