While boys are gallivanting on missions...

I have 12% battery life. Let's do this.

So being an LDS young woman in a prominently LDS area/school is interesting. I came to college just like any other doe-eyed 18 year old, with dreams of pizza, dating, and extra long twin beds. After a successful year of independence and way too much stress, the summer returns and we all parted ways until the next semester.

At least the female portion of my age group did.

The males, however, had persevered through the tedious process of submitting their mission papers, and receiving their personalized mission calls to faraway (and some not so faraway) lands. During the summer, they each departed for their 2 year adventures one by one. Upon my return, they were (of course) all gone. As I tried to resume my normal college life, it was hard to forget those people with whom I spent every day. To liven up the ordeal, a fresh shipment of newly returned missionaries returned to school to reacquaint themselves with the pizza, dating, and extra long twin beds that they had left behind before I even showed up to campus.

Thus we have the LDS cycle. But what about the girls? We watch them all come and go. We reflect on all those adolescent/teenage young women's lessons about supporting the priesthood, and supporting our peers to serve missions. What are we doing? While I'm stuck (abandoned, really) in school, stressing about ridiculous classes and some ambiguous future that will never happen exactly how I'll ever plan it, they're off on missions in Brazil, New Zealand, France, Costa Rica, and South Korea. A mission is no walk in the park, but come on. I don't think I realized that the 18-19 years are the last years that I'll ever really be on the same level with the opposite gender. By the time they get home, we're such completely different people, and so many have come and gone, that there's a fairly slim chance that we'll return to normality as we knew it.

And what about when you have your heart set on one? In two years, all of my day to day struggles will be laughable. Most of the time, all I want to do is talk to an anonymous person about my dismal lifestyle because I know that he's pretty much the only person that is so removed from the music department and everyone with whom I associate that all he'll be able to do is listen. And that's what I need. Too bad he's in an anonymous place.

But what's worse is that I'm here in Salt Lake City, betting my future on a boy that I've met one time, and who isn't in the frame of mind to understand my intentions. Let alone the fact that I can't just unload my issues on him. So many girls have this conflict. Until some newly returned young man dashes in and sweeps them off their feet.

Listen, young men. There will be no sweeping. I'm committed to living my life from random letter to random letter for the next 19 months.