Picking a College

Dear Brother Jo,

I just found your blog earlier today and I immediately thought of something to ask you. I'm 20 and right now I'm focusing on school but someone asked me a couple weeks ago why I chose the school I did when there is not many YSA in this area.

Should that have been something to consider when I was choosing a school? I'm painfully shy and I've always lived in a very spread out stake with very few young men so I've never dated much and it honestly never occurred to me to pick a school based on the amount of young men around. I alway's kind of figured that I'd wait for the guys to come back from their missions and then I'd hopefully have a bit more in common with them and they'ed be a bit more mature.

Do I have it all wrong?



~confused and slightly worried



Dear Slightly,

Choosing a college with a high concentration of people your age that have your same religious convictions makes a lot of sense. Are you more likely to date and marry a Latter-day Saint at BYU than Out-in-the-boonies State College?

Yes.

And no.

Sheer numbers suggest that it's statistically more probable, but reality also tells us that Provo is full of Cougar Co-eds that stay home most Friday nights.

I think you need to pick a college that suits you best. Maybe that's a Church school. Maybe that's a school with lots of LDS young single adults, like Boise State, Arizona State, UNLV or Southern Virginia. Maybe you just need to be active in the University Ward and Institute that's right where you are.

I live outside the Zion Curtain, in a relatively small university town. Lot's of kids, from inside this area and out (including many from Utah) find their spouses here at the local Institute.

And many don't. Some because they don't Serious Single Date (and let's face it: many of you, world wide, don't know how or why), some set spouse standards so high they themselves don't qualify, and others because they (just as you suggested) find the worthy dating pool to be too shallow.

But that's true everywhere; here, where you are; at the Y and around the world.

If you're at a school that's right for you, the only worry you should have is the previously mentioned problem areas . . . And I think you might.

If you wait around for Prince Charming to come knocking at your door, you'll find that you're going to be waiting a long time, likely a lot longer than you plan.

- Bro Jo