Sophie Update: Feeding the 5,000 YSA, Homecoming, and the day that is call’d the feast of Crispian

Dear Family,

My media consumption of the last two weeks has been unusually saturated with Taylor Swift music since Hannah, Emma, and Emma’s mother, Julie, took me to see the Taylor Swift Eras Tour movie. I realize now what my sisters have been freaking out about all summer. I actually cried when Taylor came out singing “Fearless” and I am not embarrassed about it.

I never realized how large a role Taylor Swift music played in my childhood until that moment. I felt transported back in time to our family sitting in our Toyota Sienna (that I successfully killed off soon after receiving my driver’s license), little Gracie crying her eyes out (because she was young and being in a car is hard). My dad would turn on “Love Story” by Taylor Swift, and all problems were forgotten, all hunger powerless, and any sibling quarrels put on pause for those three minutes, and often for a little while afterwards.

Of course, Taylor Swift is not the only presence that has been at the forefront of people’s minds the past few weeks, as there is a Halloween themed activity probably every day on campus if you’re in enough group chats or subscribe to enough BYU group emails.

In the weeks leading up to Halloween I was more aware than ever how little I care about this holiday. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t shake my head because of all of the weird shenanigans people get up to. I really just don’t care about it. Although I do enjoy that people use it as an excuse to give me free candy at work, ward activities, school, and random places on campus. I will take any random holiday as an excuse for that kind of special treatment. And it’s always fun to see people run to catch the bus while dressed as a Jedi. No complaints from me there.

I have recently been tasked with caring about Halloween at least a little bit since I am on the activities committee in my ward here, and I therefore have a significant role planning the Halloween party. Because I am more a creature of nostalgia than creativity, I decided to suggest we opt for the classic ward activity: a parking lot trunk-or-treat and chili cook-off. The committee was in favor of the idea, and the only drawback I noticed is that no one in college really wants to cook a chili and bring it to a party. So it was a thrilling competition between myself and pretty much all of the committee members, plus one other member who contributed.

I did win the chili cook-off, which surprised me. The judges (our bishopric) explained what they appreciated about each chili before revealing the the winner, and when they proclaimed that my chili (chili number 3) was the most “authentic” chili out of the selection, I was sure they were calling me basic. Personally, I liked chili number 4 better, but I didn’t complain. Thanks to Mom for sending me the recipe, Jess for creating the recipe, and Hannah for letting me use her instant pot. Behind every successful woman are at least three women who have more experience and better appliances.

I also made two baked zitis for a ward munch and mingle and helped serve the food out to the swarms of young single adults who came up to eat right after church was over. We called them “pasta bakes” because apparently no one my age knows what ziti is.

As little as I feel I deserved the heart-felt gratitude and praise I received from all of these college students when I dished food onto their plate, there’s something extremely gratifying about having people thank you with what seems like comically sincere appreciation in their eyes. I might have saved their future babies from a burning building, I felt so lauded. We have some kind, hungry people in this college town.

I spent almost every weekday of this month attending Lehi High School in the mornings to fulfill my classroom observation requirement for this semester. It was kind of tiring to be in Lehi for three and a half hours every morning and then to drive back to Provo to go to my big kid classes, but I grew to really enjoy the high school students in the classroom I observed. The tenth grade classes that I sat in on were all very sweet and generally motivated to work.

I must say, though, that I missed my sixth graders. I did get to build relationships with some of the students in the high school classes, but they were generally less interested in the random college student sitting in the back of the classroom, as well as less interested in the actual teacher in the front of the classroom. But I suppose that’s just high school.

One moment that I do feel the need to share happened in the few minutes between class periods on one of my last days at Lehi. One boy walks straight up to me with his phone out, and he may have mumbled a greeting but I didn’t hear it, and said, “You’ll understand in a minute.” Then he puts his phone in front of me and I’m suddenly watching an intro to an old version of the show Power Rangers. I honestly had no idea how I was supposed to react, so I just watched. Then I said something really stupid that showed that I have never seen Power Rangers before—I said, “Oh, is this a live-action Power Rangers?”

Fun fact, Power Rangers is always live-action.

Anyway, he showed me several of these different intros and I desperately tried to give him some sort of positive feedback to hold up my end of the interaction clause of the social contract, and then the bell rang and he sat down in his seat.

I still have no idea what he meant when he said, “You’ll understand in a minute.” It has now been more than a minute and I do not understand.

Now that my term class is over, I have four more hours every day! Every student who I’ve met who is further in the English Teaching program seems to know that my term class must have just ended. For the past week various English students who I’ve chatted with have asked, “Don’t you just feel so free now that you’re done with that class?”

I must say, the answer is yes. As much as I loved going to classrooms every day and as assured as I feel now that I do want to pursue becoming a teacher, I am going to start doing a little bit better in all of my other classes now that I have so much more time, and I am very excited for that.

To celebrate the end of our class, a few of my classmates and I went to a baseball game (BYU vs BYU – a match that existed purely for the sake of Homecoming week) and ate dinner. The idea was presented as a class party, but only four of us showed up. But it was four of my favorite people, so I had a good time.

Two of the girls in my class brought their significant others (a husband and a boyfriend), which became kind of funny when it came time to go to dinner. The one other single girl there had to leave early, which meant that I was kind of fifth wheeling a double date. Fortunately, that’s one of my favorite pastimes, so it was still an excellent experience, and I feel lucky to have had such wonderful classmates.

There were a lot of other activities on campus to celebrate homecoming week, but I must say that the only other official celebration I partook in was grabbing a free donut on the way into the student center on Friday during lunch. There were midnight celebrations, special games, dances, and whatever else. I don’t exactly remember all of my reasons for not going, but the reason I didn’t go to the football game was because I had a celebratory dinner with some friends of mine.

We dressed up; we drove to Vineyard (just north of Provo); we cooked a feast of store-bought chicken nuggets and boxed Mac and cheese; we feasted. I’m pretty sure most of us are actually pretty competent cooks, so I’m not sure why we decided on such an unimpressive menu, but it made for a funny image and a fun night.

Speaking of celebrations, hopefully you are all aware that Wednesday, October 25th was St. Crispin’s Day! If not, it’s okay, it probably just means you’re not British or you’ve never taken a Shakespeare class in October. We studied King Henry V in my Shakespeare class on October 25th, and I must say, it’s pretty good.

The tennis balls, the St. Crispin’s Day speech glorifying death in battle, and the clumsy French flirting tick a good number of boxes for me. To celebrate the holiday, our professor brought in many bags of “crisps” and cookies and we sat and laughed and analyzed the St. Crispin’s Day speech performed by Gilderoy Lockhart. He’s much more charismatic as King Henry than as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, in my opinion.

Finally, this last week saw a great success in our second Maryland Club gathering. People who weren’t from the Silver Spring stake came this time! People I’d never met before! It was honestly the most satisfying thing that happened to me this month. While most of the club attendees were from or associated with Silver Spring or the White Oak Ward, we also had representation from Columbia, Calver, and Baltimore, so we are steadily growing.

We are all agreed that the Maryland flag is the best state flag out there and that life is better where there are a lot of trees. And though few of the club members expressed that they would rather ultimately settle down in Virginia than Maryland, we all get along quite well and I have hope for the club to become a happy little community in the next few months.

I’m working on paying more attention to the people around me and forming relationships with new people. I’m surrounded by so many kind and caring people from all over the country (and Utah) and I want to do my best to express how much I appreciate them. I also hope to express the same to all of you. Thank you for all that you do and I hope you and yours have a happy and healthy November.

Love,

Sophie