defending the place that i love.

proof that i had the entire byu-idaho experience. in the snow. at night.

44 oz diet coke for 60 cents. you can't beat that. 

i went to ricks + i went to byu-idaho.

they were the happiest years of my life.

at night i dream it's 2003 and i'm in rexburg with my nine best friends.

outside looking in, on the snow globe that is the byu-idaho campus, there's not a lot that makes sense.

like, wwwwwhy a girl like me would give up 3 nordstroms, an international airport and a breezy 70 degrees for a walmart, a 55 mph highway, and walking to school uphill, both ways, in the snow - literally. 

 

 

you know what else didn't make sense? why i couldn't wear capri pants or flip flops on campus.

but i signed up for it. all of it.

the rules, opening geology class with a word of prayer, and kicking the boys out of the house at11 p.m.

you know what else i signed up for? running into a general authority on the way to class, compassionate professors who taught me english on tuesdays and book of mormon stories on sundays, and how to be a respectable, responsible, well balanced human being.

more proof of my out-of-this-world college experience: i'm holding a baseball mit.

so when the 24 hour blitz of this-can't-be-for-real outrage over banning skinny jeans on campus hit my social networking universe, i rose to my school's defense. loud and proud! 

there's a feeling about rexburg that can't be explained. all the words in the universe couldn't do justice to my college experience. i owe it to the years i was steadfast to the rules i agreed to live by. a life of commitment, maybe? integrity might have something to do with it, too. 

living my life in flip flops! not on campus!

for those 4 years, i agreed to live a certain way. not a better way, not the only way, but that way. and instead of fighting it, or tempting it, i lived it. and for it, i was given the best, most opportune, fun filled  4 years of my life.

so the rule {although it's not real and blown entirely out of porportion} about skinny jeans on campus might not make sense to you, you, or you. but i find it a little easier to gulp knowing that it's such an inconsequential compromise in exchange for everything wonderful that's ever come into my life.

amen.

all photo scans compliments of cindy. thank you forever for scanning in so many of these photos. good grief, film is hard.