From College Campus to Countryside

How a drastic change of scenery led to the craziest week of my life.

Talk about a change of setting. I went from the hustle and bustle of BYU's college campus, with an enrollment count of over thirty-three thousand students, to a three-and-a-half acre piece of land outside of a small town in rural Alberta whose population doesn't even pass twelve thousand. And let me tell you: it's been a crazy shift to get used to.

Living with family

I think the hardest part about moving back home has been the social scene. I had a lot of connections at BYU thanks to my on-campus ward (shoutout to YSA 106) and there was always someone to hang out with. Seriously, I'm not kidding. There was always someone awake (at all hours of the day) and they either lived in the same hall as I did or were less than a five-minute walk away.

But now, back in Canada, the only people I have come into contact with have been strictly my family. Of course, it didn't help that my parents, my three youngest siblings, and Kung Kung* all tested positive for Covid-19 the morning after I arrived home.

*Kung Kung (pronounced "gung gung") is how my family spells 公公 in pinyin. 公公 means "Mother's Father" in Cantonese Chinese. My mother's side of the family is Chinese, so you'll see me calling my grandpa (her dad) Kung-Kung and my grandma (her mom) Poh Poh.

Surprisingly, we’ve not all been bouncing off the walls and at each other’s throats. I spent the first couple of days “recovering” from the college stress before getting right into the down and dirty with working for my dad.

CS stands for Super Cool, but backwards

My dad’s a programmer and entrepreneur in IT and cybersecurity. Fitting, isn’t it then, that I’m a CS major (CS stands for Computer Science)? I’ve worked for him for years now, during the summers. I started the summer of 2019, just after grade ten. That year I learned how to design websites and write their content. 2020 I worked on a couple more websites and helped bug test a major software application he was developing. 2021 only had one and a half months of summer vacation from school, and I learned C# coding and how to write user tests.

This summer, I’m making a website for his new company, Cocoon CS. The CS this time stands for cyber security. The last times I made websites, I used Wix (hence why we’re using it now for this blog actually). But now I’m actually writing the html code for the website. Which means I’ve had to learn how to use html, css, and Bootstrap tools. It’s been super intense and I’ve had to work really hard to try and catch up to a deficiency in a field I could not have prepared for. Suuuper stressful honestly, and I’ve had to keep reminding myself that it’s okay if I’m under qualified for this job as long as I keep working hard enough to make up for it.

I’m honestly looking forward to seeing how much I learn over this summer. I hope I’ll be able to continue using these skills in the future.

None the Wiser

Fun fact everyone I also got my wisdom teeth pulled out this past week. Do you like my clever quirky heading for the section? ;)

The surgery went really smoothly and the lady who did it was such a sweetheart. My mom works at the dental office I had my surgery done at, so she knows everyone who helped. They’ve been following up with her and keeping tabs on me, which I think is equally hilarious and adorable.

My parents have been super nice about my surgery, a treatment I don’t usually get and was not expecting. Like they keep letting me get away with things or being super friendly all the time, and it was kinda confusing but now I’m just going with it.

I’ve not been keeping up with taking painkillers. Turns out I’m bad at staying on a schedule with things like that. I keep missing the hour to take the next dose and messing up how the four every twenty-four hours is supposed to work.

I went back to work the day after the day after my surgery, sorry that’s confusing but it‘s grammatically correct so I’m leaving it in. My mouth hurt a lot that day, apparently the third day is the worst… so that’s fun. I put in ten hours of work and did the same the next day too. Like I said, my job is kinda insane. I’ve also got heartburn from something since Friday morning. It’s sucked trying to fall asleep with that. So instead, I watched a couple of episodes of Riverdale and now I’m hooked on that again. Which is dumb because it’s such a lazily written show lol. However, when in Rome... or if we’re being specific here: when bedridden from surgery and painkillers and heartburn…

Heartburn and Heartache

Okay, finishing strong here: I miss my friends. A. Lot.

a lot.

I feel so far away from all of them, which kinda comes with being in a different country ya feel? And I miss being able to see them all the time. When I work with my dad, I kinda only ever see one person (him). We work in the basement of my house, but my mom’s away at the dental office and everyone else is at school. And then I’m so busy with work and they’re all busy with homework stuff and soccer that I still don’t get to see them.

So yeah, I’ve been dealing with a slight amount of heartache from missing having people to hang out with. I keep getting tiktoks about realizing you’ve started a new season in life: new cast, new setting, new everything. And it have me such a bittersweet feeling. Because as much as new beginnings are amazing and I love them, I’m also scared that this new season won’t be as good as the first. You know how they always say that the sequels are never better than the first? (unless you’re High School Musical apparently). Well, that’s the situation I’m in right now.

I loved my freshman year at BYU. I made amazing friends, from my roommates, to my nerd friends, to my coworkers, and yes, even to the friends of the guy I dated for three weeks. I don’t know if it’ll ever be the same, and you know what? Maybe part of me doesn’t want it to be. So that I can hold on to those memories and never forget how incredible it was.

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Alright! Well that’s it for me and my first blog post. TTYL 🤍