Well, with barely over 24 hours until my departure from BYU-Idaho, I feel that this is a good time for a little reflection on this semester both the good and the bad. First off, a little award goes out to my parents and my siblings for their spectacular support over the semester. Research suggests that raising a child to age 18 costs around $150,000 give or take a little. Now, that translates (based on $60,000 annual income) to $1,080,000 over 18 years. That translates to $918,000 after 15% taxes. Take another 10% for misc. debt and expenses leaving the take home pay at $826,200. Now, $150,000 means that a parent spends 18.16% of their income on one child. How many people do you care about enough to spend 18.16% of everything you make on them. Now let's not forget the cost of raising children after 18. The cost of college (a 4 year college education) is probably decently close to the same $150,000 mark after book, tuition, living expenses, etc. So thank you mom and dad for you absolutely fantastic support of me over the years. Monetarily speaking, you've only given me 18.16% percent of your monetary possessions, but I know that you've fact given me 100% of yourselves, plus some change. And were it required I would give you 100% of what I have. That happens to total to the order of $0.72, but hey, its the thought that counts, right?
As far as my BYU-I experience, it has been quite an eye opener. The culture here is quite different from the culture of North Carolina. Rolling hills are replaced by snow capped jagged peaks that loom in the distance. Greenery is replaced by potatoes. Also, a town that is 98% or 99% Mormon is quite foreign. Its pretty cool no longer being the minority and my social/religious life has become one and the same. My educational experience here has been excellent as well. I have enjoyed all of my professors and I have learned so much. I really like my Computer Science teacher. He worked on Microsoft Word 97-07 editions. For those who don't know, MS Word 07 is the new version that will become public on Jan. 30th, 2007. In Word 2003 he did the research pane where you can look up word definitions. The point is that he is an awesome guy and really knows his stuff. I mean that guy knows computers. And he has a sense of humor, which is verryyy rare. Most amazing to me is learning how to program computers. For example, imagine you have 5 numbers that you want to sort lowest to highest. It would take you about 10 seconds. Imagine that you couldn't do that. Imagine that all you could do was tell if one number was higher than another number. Someone had to tell you to look at the first and second number, see which one is higher, and then either switch them or leave them the same. That's what programming a computer is like.
Back to my year in review. Another thing I have learned is that Calculus is evil. Yes, calc II was created by mentally insane people. You know, one day, I just realized that by adding consecutive nth-order derivatives that I can approximate functions through polynomials of order nth + 1. And I'll call it a Taylor series. And I'll put cool-looking Greek symbols throughout my formula so people will think I'm smart. That's what Calc II is like. I understood what I said about as much as you did. So I have successfully eliminated math as a possible career choice.
Overall, the year has been cool. I've enjoyed my time here and felt like I've experienced a little more of the world. Again, a huge thanks goes out to my friends and family. I really wouldn't have survived this semester without you guys. If you've so much as e-mailed me over the course of the semester, you've made a sizable impact on my life, and I appreciate it. Plus I loving hearing from anyone from NC, I miss my home land.
One last little story. Fortunately I have a laptop, so when I want to type a story about my roommate, I can just leave the room as I'm doing it. Anyway, I got a ride with him down to Provo this last weekend. I've seen bad drivers, but I honestly thought I was going to die! He was only going 5 over the speed limit, but when he would get get behind a car going slow in the left lane, he would ride up on their bumper, I mean realllllyyyy close, begin honking his horn and flashing his lights until they moved over! I mean, I honestly thought we were going to get shot! Anyway, I found another ride back from Utah, one that didn't involve my roommate so things went much smoother. Anyway, happy holidays to all! Merry Christmas and see you in North Carolina at 7:35am wednesday morning!
