Let me tell you how BYU is ruining my life

Love/Hate relationship with BYU? Yes. Ok here's the story. It's a little long, sorry. I'm feeling dramatic.

I went into the Humanities advisement center on Tuesday to talk to a counselor about what classes I still need to graduate, when I should take them, and how I will work my classes in around my mission. You know, all that fun stuff that stays in the back of your mind for a few weeks until you actually do something about it.

My first mistake was mentioning to the counselor that I had met with her before but I didn't have my graduation plan with me. My second mistake was confessing that it was in a box somewhere in my attic. In California. Ok sure, I probably shouldn't have left it at home but come on BYU, can't you train your counselors to input the plan into their computers? For goodness sake, we have bathrooms equipped with automated toilet paper dispensers now (not to mention the paper towel dispensers, soap dispensers, automatic sinks, and automatic flush toilets). You can't pamper us like that and then expect us to enter our own grad plans into our own computers. It's just not fair.
So she barrels through my classes and basically plans my life for me in about 5 minutes, in completely illegible handwriting might I add, and then asks me if I have any questions. This last part sounded a lot like a threat so I politely shook my head, thanked her, and left. Basically, what she told me was this: I have to take 5 semesters of Spanish classes before I can graduate which, long story short, means that leaving on my mission this fall would be digging myself into an enormous hole of grief that I will never be able to climb out of. She had me brainwashed for a couple hours until Emily suggested that I go into the School of Education to talk to another counselor for a second opinion.

Round two. I go into the advisement office in the School of Education and wait for a good twenty minutes to meet with the expert. His name is Jay. Now Jay, compared to She Who Must Not Be Named, is the nicest man I have ever met. He is super smiley, soft spoken, listened to all of my questions, and gave me a lengthy discourse on why he thinks sister missionaries are totally awesome. Two thumbs up for him! He also stressed that if my "heartstrings" (his word choice) are telling me to serve a mission then I should go as soon as I can and BYU will help me work out the school stuff when I get back. Then he handed me the golden ticket. He told me that I don't have to take five semesters of four credit Spanish classes, instead I can take TWO Philosophy classes that are only THREE credits each! I was on cloud nine! This was perfect! I was going to serve my mission, leave right away, graduate in June 2013 and be able to avoid Spring/Summer classes forever.

That night I told Elliot my good news and she almost cried out of frustration because she is halfway through her first semester of the Spanish nightmare. Her counselors told her that she absolutely had to take a foreign language to graduate since she was an English major. I'm an English major too, but Jay said I didn't have to! I let myself have a night of bliss imagining a Spanish free existence but this morning reality hit. I pulled up the grad plan for English Teaching and it turns out that Jay had no idea what he was talking about. Philosophy is not gonna fly, Elliot's counselor was right, and it's back to foreign language for me. I'm looking at taking ASL (American Sign Language) instead of Spanish...what can I say? My life is a work in progress.

PS: Last night I had nightmare where the evil Humanities advisement counselor was Ursula from Little Mermaid and we were in the middle of an epic battle. The only weapon I had was a handful of burning hot crayons. She was winning. Then I woke up.