Eric Attica
Amid the throngs of late, busy people
In the shade of a silent tree
I stopped to talk to a girl
with a butterfly on her finger.
(Enormous, with sheets of gold for wings,
and still as the sun.)
I asked, where did you find it?
She said, I raised it myself
And yesterday it was a caterpillar.
It’s that time of the semester again: all the weirdest, wisest, and most unhinged quotes I’ve heard during the last four months of school, all in one place. We’ve got a liberal—nay, promiscuous—helping this time. So buckle your seat belts and remember, in the words of a random stranger I overheard: “Love is stronger than communicable disease. Trust me on this.”
The closest you get to a one night stand at BYU is ‘hey do you want to do the bowling deal with me?’ —Brandon
Emily (about Portal): I really love the little turrets. They’re so cute.
Brandon: Probably 70% of my social skills come from those turrets. Conservative.
I have as much reading comprehension as a poodle right now. Possibly less. —Emily
That’s actually a swear word in my conlang. —Em
My conlang is exclusively swear words. —Em, upon having this quote reread to her
I have a devil on both shoulders. —Em
As I read that sentence, my eyes narrowed promiscuously. —Camryn
People think it’s weird when I give them earlobe massages. —Michael
Every time I go to Tucano’s I feel so sick afterwards and it takes me like two business days to recover —Em
Actually they were infertile because they were vaporized. —Brandon, on the dinosaurs
Michael: Captain Crunch is like eating tacks.
Camryn: Tacks that love you.
Brandon: I wonder if there’s a place for LDS midwest emo.
Em: In French?
Brandon: It’s very niche.
That’s not a hearse, that’s Kate! —Michael
Who wants to bet that I’ll eat a screw by the end of the night? —Michael
Hot cameraman: lost to time —Camryn, watching The Ring
They’re already having a funeral, so it seems rather economical to have him die at the funeral. —Camryn
They really could have used more oboe when someone died. —Michael
You have free will. You can do whatever you want. You are like a sovereign state on the international stage. Laws are enforced, but not really. —Em, taking polysci
Okay when I say emo I just mean interesting. —Brandon
Camryn: Don’t die, Eric.
Me: Why would I do that?
Camryn: I can think of many reasons.
You should play hard to get with Colonel Sanders Eric, I think you’re worth it. —Camryn
NCMO skills, guys. I can play the mandolin with my tongue. —Brandon
I’d love to have that experience, but I would love to have someone else have that experience and transfer all the skills to me. In summary, I would not like to have that experience. —Em
There’s a line from the Bible about final exams: ‘Tis better to give than to receive.’ —Dr. Harper
This is almost as important as ‘don’t put the entire folder in the trash.’ —Dr. Eckstein
[…if I’m just standing here in the classroom], and I see Pope John Paul II. Wouldn’t that be surprising, especially because he’s dead. —Dr. Green
It’s okay to feel let down by the theory. —Dr. Green
People do say crap when they’re looking at this, but it’s an acronym. It means Commonly Recorded Artefactual Potentials. —Dr. Green
Your textbook talks about ‘Government.’ We’re going to ignore it. —Dr. Green
Anyone can kick the bucket. And most people do at some point. —Dr. Green
If you’re interested I can send you my friggin’ long dissertation. —Anonymous
Composition is the humanities equivalent of football. —Dr. Eckstein
That’s the reason I went into the humanities. I topped out at trigonometry. But it turns out that numbers are letters that are shaped differently. —Dr. Eckstein
So I get to be the first pancake?! —Dr. Johnson’s research assistant
We’re geeking out about vowels here, and you’re like, hey look, look at her consonants! —Dr. Stanley
There are people who are raised speaking Esperanto as an L1–their parents meet at Esperanto conventions, and they speak Esperanto at home. This happens with Klingon as well from time to time, but… —Dr. Whiting
I saw a hot girl in my class, so I kinda went and sat down next to her. And I was like, ‘Your outfit makes you look like a Pokemon trainer.’ And she [thought for a second, and she] was like, ‘Do you have a type?’ And I was like, ‘Grass.’ She wasn’t talking about Pokemon. —Speaker in church
It was funny, I didn’t realize it was a date until like days afterwards. —Overheard
It’s very different when you see them in a casket and they have all their skin on. —Overheard, about anatomy class ∎
There’s a topic that I’ve been avoiding on this blog—and that, of course, is religion.
To say anything about religion is to position oneself relative to innumerable creeds, philosophies, spiritual orientations, practices, taboos, and relationships. Especially where I live. My native Utah is a very religious society, and I say that not just because there are churches everywhere. Social scientists talk about one’s “membership” in any number of groups. In Utah, if someone says they’re a “member” or “non-member”, there’s only one group they can be referring to: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“the Mormon Church”, “the LDS Church”, or here, just “the Church”).
Religion has been a huge part of my life since the beginning. I grew up in a faithful Latter-day Saint home to two incredible and devout parents. I lived in Denmark for two years, from 2019 to 2021, as a full-time proselytizing missionary for the Church, and I attend Brigham Young University, which was the one school I applied to when I was preparing for college at sixteen. It’s owned and operated by the Church, and it’s a strange and fascinating place—largely, I think, because of the creative and messy interaction between young adults and the Church.
Identities and beliefs are constructed in relation to existing identities and beliefs—never in a vacuum—and are only magnified under pressure. College is the time when many young adults decide what role their religious beliefs will play in their futures. Policies such as those that students who leave the Church are expelled and gay students are subject to discipline for going on dates or holding hands inevitably create pressure that facilitates the creation of strong identities both aligned with and opposed to that of the Church—not to mention a home for underground journalism. BYU’s faculty have also undergone a directed recommitment to orthodoxy with a strengthening of religious requirements for new hires, and I heard one administrator tearfully defend his faith in the character of his employees—a defense that would never have needed to be made had there been no fear as a consequence. Campus does feel like a battleground some days.
In such a climate, I hope I can be forgiven for my trepidation at staking my flag anywhere when it comes to religion. Confusion, anger, and obscurity seem to be associated with religious issues at BYU just as often as faith, hope, and charity. Yet that isn’t to say I haven’t found nuggets of goodness at BYU and its hybrid world of orthodox apologetics and coffee shop heresy. Some of my favorite professors have been the purveyors of religious ideas, like the kind Dan Becerra and the excited and knowledgeable Matthew Grey, and even professors in other disciplines, like Norm Evans, whose calm kindness and love is woven together with his religious faith.
Anyway, all this introduction is to provide a little context and qualification for this first foray into religion. The upcoming parts of this post (part two | part three) are an essay I wrote for one of BYU’s required religion classes (“Foundations of the Restoration”), in which I summarize a work of history by a figure in early Latter-day Saint history, John Corrill, and comment on what his experience tells us about the history of dissent among the Mormons. I hope you’ll find something interesting in it!
(Or you could just read Corrill’s history himself on the Joseph Smith Papers website here. It’s probably about an hour’s read, and the writing is lucid and direct.) ∎