Simply and Satirically Me

First day of classes for my seventh semester at BYU. I needed an easy 2 credit class. In fact, I was seriously searching to find the most laughable excuse of a college course I could find. A joke class. As I was laboring over the registration process, I recalled a conversation I had with a previous American Heritage Student. While we were in the Review Room, she had a number of papers on the table that didn’t look like they related to the course. So I asked her about them.                 “Oh, this is for my positive living class.”                 I think I laughed. “Positive living? What does that even mean?”                 She was surprisingly enthusiastic, “Oh, it’s really great actually. The class is supposed to help you learn how to handle all th...

Do you know what it’s like to be homeless? Well, I don’t. At least, not completely. Because in the end, I wimped out. But that’s actually the end of the story. So how, you may ask, did I end up living in a cardboard fort for a night? Or maybe you’re more inclined to just ask…why? Here’s how it begins. One wild week in the life of Sandra Shurtleff. Actually let’s start a few weeks back. A Monday night activity. I’m eating hot dogs with my FHE brothers at a Ward party. It was supposed to be a swimming party, but…that’s beneath me. Okay, actually I just lost my swimsuit somehow over the summer. And so I have to just look too cool to swim. This is also necessary since I actually don’t know how to swim anyway. My life is an embarrassment. In any case, somewhere amidst the conversation one of my “brothers” asked what us three girls at the small table were doing after the move out day for our apartment complex. BYU housing has this strange problem where there is a week or tw...

I see them on the streets, shouting protests, feeling free Raising signs that speak their minds, fighting words, that ain’t no crime They say to break the norms of life, free your soul, forsake the strife Be who you want to be…it’s all about nonconformity. But I don’t understand the cry, I don’t feel free, I don’t know why All the crowds that pass me by, reject my words, they call them lies They say I am not to believe. Cannot be who I want to be. They   reject me, who I am, and I just don’t understand. I don’t want to stand for nothing. So I stand for something, And they all rise to their feet, shout their objection, victory complete. I am not to be free, unless I agree. There’s something to be said for irony. Conform to nonconformity. Welcome to society, we’ll dictate who you are supposed to be Deviance is wiped away, tossed aside, there’s no escape. I stand alone, being myself, I’m on my own. Why can’t I free my soul of strife by keeping a...