So I have this lit and film class. It's English 345. And there's this girl who sits in front of me, and as as I'm bored in class, I have the opportunity to stare at her and wonder how old she is. Now, I don't normally stare at classmates and wonder about their age, but this girl is a special case. It's impossible that she's older than 16. She looks 16. She dresses 16. She doesn't sound 16 when she comments in class, but dammit, she looks and dresses 16!
She wears jeans that she and her friends have written messages on. She wears flip flops that have fabric sticking out all over the place. Nothing is wrong with either of those things, but they're both juvenile. You don't see them on a university campus when EFY isn't going on.
Finally on Tuesday, I asked her how old she was. She said that she is 16. Ha! I asked how she could possibly be taking English 345, because there are pre-reqs. She said that she has been at BYU for three semesters. She started when she was 15. So she explained that she'd been home-schooled and that her family said she was too young to go off to college, so they moved to Provo with her. So yes, she was a Mia Maid when she started school. And now she can date. Oh, and then she asked me if I would please take notes for her in class on Thursday because she would be away at Girl's Camp.
On Thursday, I headed off to campus to attend class and take extra-good notes for my 16-year-old friend. Only on my way there, an old Zone Leader called me and said that he and his wife (my greenie) were driving through town and wanted to get together with me for lunch. Immediately. (When they called, they were about a minute away from the place where I was actually standing.) So I did what anyone would do. I skipped class and went out with my friends who were visiting from out of town.
When I told this to my mother, she was appalled that I would not do my duty towards this sweet 16-year-old. I told my mom that I was offering the youngster a chance to grow up. Fast.
(Okay, so I feel bad, but really. I wasn't going to miss going out with my old mission buddies just to take notes in class. I'm sure that someone else took notes.)
10 comments:
She's missing college classes to go to girls' camp? Weird.
And on a somewhat related note, there is a girl at my work who doesn't look 16 but certainly sounds it (her voice is very breathy and young-sounding, and she giggles a lot). I wonder if it's an affectation.
Maybe you could make it up to her with a pajama party or something like that. Or a gift certificate to the mall...
Whoa. I was friends with a kid who had just turned sixteen the April before he started at the Y, too. So basically, he was starting his dating life on a college campus--with 18- and 19-year-old freshman girls, some of whom were, arguably, as immature as he was. It made for some interesting conversation. He was one of those voracious teenage-boy daters, so dating college women was really a bad idea, IMO.
Huh. Wow. And her family moved with her to Provo so she could start school, eh? That's really interesting.
I took English 345--and during a spring term, too. Who's your prof and how are you liking it?
(BTW, this is TexMom now blogging as DesMom, since I moved).
If she misses one class it's not like she's going to fail or anything. By the third term she should be able to roll with skipping a class or two.
So, how did you keep a straight face when she asked you to take notes for her while she was at GIRLS CAMP!? Becasue I was luaghing out loud.
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Ah. Now I understand what all that "Damn me!" stuff was about.
Wow. I'm just glad that I wasn't in college at 16. This way all of the 16-year-old stuff which I did stayed (for the most part) in high school.
But let's be honest, she is probably much more mature than I was then.
I'm sure this is just me, but I think that putting younger kids in college can be a crapshoot at times. It sounds like she is pretty mature and can handle the course load, but I still think that it's good to let kids stay kids as long as possible.
Now that I'm done with college, I wish I had spent a little more time there. Or just that I had slowed down and taken some more fun/non-manditory classes. Really, there's no rush to get done, or at least not by a certain age or time.
So, we've been homeschooling Junior, who has just turned 10. He's not quite ready for BYU, so we've moved to Arkansas so he can start the TV-VCR Repair class at Sally Struthers College. We're pretty proud, and we're not at all worried about his socialization because if we were, we wouldn't have homeschooled and moved in the first place. I'm hoping his new friend Billy Bob will take notes next week while Junior is at Chuck E Cheese Day Camp. I'm not so sure you can trust someone named Billy Bob.
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