Once again I was leaving all of my friends behind. And unlike the previous two school switches, I no longer had Jeff, or anyone else by my side. It was a pretty lonely time of my life, my high school friends were doing their thing and I no longer even had a thing. I went from knowing everybody, being involved in everything, to being just a student. I always had done well in school, but I never defined who I was by how I did in class. My actual schoolwork was always far down the list on what made me me, now it was all I had.
The first week of classes when I introduced myself, yes we had small enough class sizes that we got to know each other and our teachers recognized us, I got to say I am David Horan, I'm 17, living at home, and I don't know what I want my major to be. Man, why weren't people coming out of the woodwork wanting to be my friend? I didn't have rehearsals, sports, friends or anything to look forward to at school. I just got up, went to class, came home, did homework, went to bed.
Now it wasn't actually as bad as I just made it sound. I still did a lot with my friends, I had weekly activities with my priests quorum, and had a lot of fun wherever I was. I also didn't just sit in class and ignore everyone, I had several "in class friends". You know, the people you are best friends with, but only in that class. You would never actually do something with them outside of that setting, but in that class you are like family.
With this rough start to college I could have taken 1 of 2 approaches. I could either start getting involved, join some music classes, try out for a musical or something either at the school or locally, or I could just try and get done with school as fast as possible.
I briefly looked into classes and they all seemed to be 1 credit and take a lot of time. I was good at all of that stuff, but I knew I wasn't good enough to make a career in it. It would purely be for fun, and would keep me going to school longer than needful. So I took the second approach and got done with as much as possible. When I left for my mission I had about 40 credits.
I also took 2 institute classes each semester and enjoyed those as well. I took a world religions class, mission prep, New Testament, and Book of Mormon class. I also took a mission prep class that my home stake was offering that was also really good.
That next summer I was 18 and would be turning 19 at the end of August. Then I could leave on my mission, I was very excited. A month or two before the summer began my stake redid their boundaries. I got moved from the ward that had every single one of my friends in it. This had been the only thing that had kept me sane, still having this one connection with them all. I knew that we could obviously still do a lot together, but I decided it was time to find a way to keep us together. So 5 of us decided to move to Provo, my other friends had graduated high school now and it sounded like a fun thing to do.
Jared Davis and I were really the only two of the five that really jumped in feet first. The others, besides Matt, really just seemed to want to have a cool hang out place. They wanted the best of both worlds, which really isn't possible, you cannot serve two masters, or have two homes. Eventually most of them were hardly ever around and Jared and I had the place to ourselves. It was a good learning experience before the mission. Plus our family and friends were super close if we ever needed anything.
Here I made some really great friends. When we moved into the ward they thought great, we have some pre-missionaries moving in. But Jared and I were soon some of the most popular people there. I went back a few years later and people had said they had heard about us. One of our claims to fame was car sitting, we would go and sit on the back of my car and talk and people would see us and started talking to us too.
Eventually my car was too popular, so we discovered a new hang out place. The wall. It was a place a few blocks away near the duck pond. Many conversations were had at this spot, exciting, sad, relationship related, funny, you name it, we talked about it.
We became such good friends with the apartment next door that we just named our places Miler 3.5. There is even a facebook group called Miller Threepointfivia and its Friends. There are 32 members, although nobody has written on it for 2 years... They even have a blog, and created a flag. Yeah, we were that cool.
Some of my favorite memories include playing mafia, staying up until all hours of the night, dance parties, bi-weekly man talk, and being able to take part in our friend Armondo getting baptized. Brett, Kevin, Filipe, Mina, and many many others, will all be people I hold dear to my heart for as long as I live. I have only seem each of them a time or two since I got back, but I hope they are doing well.
During this summer Jared and I got our mission calls. I got called to Seattle, and he got called to Milwaukee. We both reported to the MTC in October within a week of each other. Sadly, the summer ended. It had been one of the best summers of my life, and I have had some great ones. I was glad that I got involved in the ward, and made the most of my time there. Life really is what you make of it. I may have decided to get done with school as fast as possible, but I wasn't ready to give up on enjoying life. Plus I can't help but make whatever I am doing fun.
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