COLLEGE

(WRITTEN PRESENT- 2024)

When I started college, I was angry. I was angry not just because nothing over that past 18 months prior to starting school made any sense, and all I believed in was shrouded in doubt, angst, and resentment, I was also angry because growing up, I dealt with all the labels of stupid, unfocused, irresponsible, etc., and it really hurt my self esteem. Then, through psyche pounding trauma, you come off the mission and realize how compromised you were by this horrible time consuming mind distorting mental illness called OCD. I wanted to prove a point. But when I look back, just like growing up, I would just say to myself, "People don't define you, God defines you, listen to him, and just be yourself."

(WRITTEN IN 2020)

I start school in the fall, and under my parents advice, I only take 2 classes.

I think about my past as a child, as an adolescent. I think about all the judgement, the dumb labels, the loneliness and OCD and how it effected me in High School, how incredibly debilitating it had been my entire life. I am so incredibly angry. I’m really mad at all “The upper middle class white kids I grew up with” all my peers, teachers, leaders, older siblings, everybody. They all labeled me stupid, they labeled me less than all of them. I had OCD DAMNIT, it was an incredibly debilitating disorder, it severely affected my childhood and adolescence in so many ways!! How are you supposed to perform when dealing with all that I did.

I was hell bent on proving a point, that I could go to school where all the entitled upper middle class white kids went to school, that were condescending and made fun of people deemed less intelligent than them, that picked on me, I wanted to go to BYU. I guess for that reason I have a love hate relationship with that school. 

I also was still really angry about the mission experience, it was so unfair, I couldn’t make sense out of it. Unfortunately, I really didn’t have enough counseling upon getting home.

My OCD can make me hyper focus when I’m passionate about something. Ask my bandmates, ask my mission companions. So that is what I did. I went to junior college, because I wasn't gonna get in anywhere else. I didn’t really socialize. I didn’t really make friends, I withdrew (when your not well you withdrawal). Eventually I went to a YSA ward, and started socializing more. But I was so angry, and so set on proving all the upper middle class white people wrong that send their kids to BYU, they’re all condescending pricks! That’s what I felt.

I basically redid High School, because I didn’t learn anything in High School. OCD, scrupulosity, and depression were my High School experience, it sucked really bad.

I remember being so lonely then. I remember studying on Friday nights, just pissed off at the world. I remember driving home and wishing I had more friends, wishing I was more social. When I’m healthy, I’m an extremely gregarious extrovert, but not so when I’m depressed. I remember finals, and I remember the stress and anxiety getting to me, I remember driving home and feeling like the night sky was coming down on me, it was bizarre. Oh, I was so misguided. I was so mad. 

I got a 3.9 GPA, almost perfect. I pretended there wasn’t a curve, and would study so. I really did have a love of learning I found, it wasn’t just about flipping the bird to those I resented, I really absorbed information, and loved it. 

In a Biology Class of 200 students, I got a true A with 3 other kids, the only true A’s in the class. Our grades were thrown out to help the curve. In reality, I found 90 percent of kids float through college, don’t really learn a whole lot. It’s cram and vomit information for a test. It's not really how one learns though. I remember getting free math books in all my algebra classes for getting the highest grades. Even up through College Algebra I would get an A+.

So I applied and I got into BYU. I remember the day I received my acceptance letter. I was hanging out with one of the few buddies I had at the time. We were watching Rudy. 

After watching the movie, I had a Rudy moment, and I went and walked alone on BYU campus, and I felt in my heart, I did it, I got in, I was never supposed to go to school here. I got rather emotional. 

But you know what, it didn’t change how I felt while I was at school there. I still felt inadequate, I still didn’t feel like I was good enough. Oh that devil called inadequacy. I got into the business school, I thought I was going to be a corporate man. I did well in the business school. It was hard. It took all I had to balance school and OCD, and again, I didn’t have the counseling I should have had while in school. I didn’t have a steady girlfriend or get married, the thought was overwhelming. The thought of marriage and kids still overwhelms me today. Like I said, it took all I had to graduate and keep it together, school was all I could handle. 

After my first semester at BYU, I finally felt like I could move out on my own and be a normal college kid. I was 24 ½ years old, and I was finally moving out to be a college kid. 

Look, a lot of college sucked, but there were some good memories at BYU. In the midst of all that had ensued in my past, the year my little brother came home from his mission, and the summer we went to sell pest control in Modesto, CA, which really is quite a dump, but the girls we met at church, the beach trips, it was the best summer of my life. 

In college, I remember my YSA wards, I remember all the girls I became friends with. I remember having good times with my roommates. Though there was a lot going on inside that nobody really knew about, though there was this ugly past that nobody knew about, during the moments at school with roommates, when I wasn’t stressing about school, during social and ward activities, I was a really gregarious fun loving guy. My roommates loved me, because I really am at the core a social guy, I mean really social. 

Nonetheless, it was hard to balance OCD, I often felt inadequate and angry, and I studied way too much. 

There were times when I was so tired, and thought, “Man, I don’t know if I can do this.” Some kids coast through college, and some don’t. I was definitely the latter.  Though I loved learning, OCD made it hard to balance. It especially made studying effectively difficult, at least in a college setting. I would try to memorize and learn everything, I had to know every detail and reason why. I was terrible at just studying what might be on the test. I had to see the entire picture, studying every last shred of information. 

The problem is I would start studying for a test a ways out, way before most, so I could cover everything, and then as the test drew near, I would forget some of the earlier stuff I studied. 

I honestly would have done better to just cram and regurgitate like every other college kid. That’s how college is set up, it really cultivates a cram and vomit learning environment, which isn’t really conducive to a learning environment ironically. At the end of the day, college isn’t about learning, it’s about taking a test and making connections.

I can't just get a halfway idea about a topic. If I can’t dive in and eat the entire elephant, I’d rather not eat the elephant at all. Yes, its definitely an OCD thing. I do best learning outside of structured environments, learning what and how I want to learn, as do most people who with mental illness.

Non the less, I remember the day I walked out of the BYU testing center, after finishing my last final. This is what I felt inside- "ITS DONE!! I DID IT! HOW? I DON'T KNOW, BUT I DID IT! IT'S DONE, I FINISHED COLLEGE, AND I DON'T EVER WANT TO GO BACK!"