Review: First year of master's, 2006-2007

Another last-minute decision at the end of the summer led me to move into the apartment complex where my brother Matt had lived since the beginning of the summer. It seemed like a good place and I'd enjoyed it during the times that I visited him that summer, and I had always enjoyed being in Matt's ward in the past, so it seemed like a good idea.

It was. There were two notable things about this move. The first was that there were a lot of people I had known in high school living in the complex. I hadn't really seen many of them for a long time, so it was both very strange and fun to see how they'd changed in the years since graduation.

The second was that this was the first time, aside from Nauvoo, that I moved into an apartment without knowing any of my roommates. For some reason, this did not make me nervous at all, although I felt like it maybe should. But I'm glad I didn't waste time worrying over it, because those girls came to become some of my best friends. I became very good friends with Emily and Jenny right off the bat. This was fortuitous because they both ended up marrying boys in the ward that I went to high school with, and I played a small role in both of them getting to know their respective husbands. Very gratifying for me.

Two of my other roommates were both named Heather. One of them picked up a boyfriend/fiance pretty quickly, but the other Heather became one of my best friends, too.

I also had the great fortune to be in the same biochemistry lab as another boy in the ward and former high school friend, Rob, who was a biochemistry genius. We were lab partners, and I think the fact that we did all our work jointly helped save my neck in that class. Smart people are great to have around.

I spent a lot of time reading research papers and writing a thesis proposal. I took one of the most fascinating classes I'd ever attended, taught by one of the best- and most feared- biology professors about how to teach science in higher education. I also took graduate level stats, which should have done me more good than it did. I did a lot of labwork, some of which worked and some of which did not.

This was the year of the last hurrah and it has a golden tint in my memory. There were good friends in the apartment, great friends in the ward, fun people in the lab, and the hope of a bright future ahead. Part of the beauty was the knowledge that it was so fleeting- so many of the people were graduating and leaving Provo at the end of the year. So I enjoyed it while I could.