Ihave a confession: I'm from Utah. Not only that, but as far as I know, I'm one of only two U.Va. undergrads from the Beehive State (shout-out to Susannah from Ogden). Multiple facebook searches confirm this theory. If I'm wrong and you're from Utah, please e-mail me at drs9p@virginia.edu. We'll have lunch and try to figure out how it's possible for the "Utes" to win a BCS bowl and go to the Sweet 16 after we traveled 2,000 miles to watch ACC sports.
Announcing my birthplace in a widely circulated newspaper is a bigger step for me than you might think. If I had met you at a party, for example, I probably would have told you I'm from Phoenix. I even know a few local facts to make my story believable. Did you know it's illegal to hunt camel in Arizona? True story.
It's not that being from Utah is so bad in itself. It's the associated assumptions and follow-up questions I'm trying to avoid. I don't especially want to hear about a friend you have at BYU or what you think of Ken Jennings, and I don't want you to assume anything about my beliefs. It's okay, don't pretend you're not wondering if I'm Mormon right now, maybe scanning the column for a latent obscenity or mention of God that would confirm or deny your suspicions. I guess you'll just have to wonder.
That being said, some of your assumptions about where I come from are probably correct, and leaving the reddest state in the nation was a big adjustment. First year, while you were getting used to no longer being smartest in your class and having a roommate, I was having the meaning of "grinding" explained to me after getting the courage to ask a friend. While you were deciding how involved you wanted to be with Rugby Road, I was deciding how involved I wanted to be with coffee.
It wasn't all bad though. Being the only Utahan (pronounced Ute-Awn, and that is the official term), I used to pretend I was like Superman: the last of a dead planet trying to make my way in a new and different place despite having supernatural powers. Okay, I don't have supernatural powers (yet), but I still enjoyed the comparison.
And like Superman, I found some big differences between my two homes. When I mention that I used to have "parties" at my house where we watched all three "Back to the Future" movies in a row (even the third one) while a rousing game of Scrabble took place in another room, I always get a few laughs.
I also learned that handholding is not actually a base, as well as the definitions of many other sexual terms I had been unsure about or completely unaware of in the past. I picked up on "sexile" pretty quickly, but I'm still a little confused about "macking."
Trying to describe my new life to friends at home was even more difficult. In my hometown of Bountiful (that's really its name), kids who had seen "The Godfather" were considered to be of questionable character, so you can imagine what my friends thought when I told them some of the things we do for fun on weekends at U.Va.
In the beginning, it was difficult for me not to judge others by Utah standards as well. I never had seen a beer before, and now I was watching my friend pour three down his throat through a funnel. You'd be a little taken aback, too.
Yes, for a while I was surprised by how different the "real world" was from my home state. As I got to know people better, though, I got past that. I realized that we all have more in common than it seems. The fact that you all love "Napoleon Dynamite" so much attests to that. Psst... for those of you who don't know, it's about Mormons.
It might sound corny (hey, I'm from a town called "Bountiful"), but I've learned that we are all generally good. Volunteer service is as prolific here as back in the Rockies, helping a friend through a crisis is equally common and we've all seen every episode of "Saved by the Bell," including the infamous summer-at-the-beach saga.
Once you realize these important commonalities, the differences become much less significant. It's not about who drinks what or the morality of our respective base systems. The real point is that, when it comes down to it, nearly everyone would like to leave the world better than he or she found it. Given the choice between helping and hurting someone, the vast majority of us would choose to help. When you see the big picture, it's easy to find good people everywhere, even in Phoenix ... or so I've heard.
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