Scrollie for life

I now interrupt the flow of Montana pictures to share our trip from this weekend: the Scroll reunion! While we didn't intentionally do it this way, June turned out to be our month of travel -- and is probably the last of our road trips for a while, since Andrew is sadly out of vacation time.

After leaving Thursday night and getting to St. Anthony about 1:30 a.m., we got up early and drove to Yellowstone (a few photos of that will be coming soon -- after I finish with the Montana pictures) to finally catch Mammoth Hot Springs with water. I am sad to say that after driving clear up there, Mammoth did not have water. My plans of taking photos of it with water were frustrated. Sigh.

Then we drove back down to St. Anthony, changed our clothes and went to the Scroll reception in the Spori building. I got to talk with my old Scroll advisors at BYU-Idaho, show Andrew the newspaper office and eat some of Brother Warnick's famous salsa. And our brother-in-law, Daniel, gave us a tour of the new BYU-Idaho Center, which is enormous. He even took us underneath the building to show us the ventilation system (huge tunnels that force the air up). We also walked around the MC and saw all the changes there. It's a totally different building. I can't believe how much BYU-Idaho has changed in just the three years since I graduated. It actually made me kind of sad.

From Rexburg we drove to Firth and had a campout with my mom's side of the family. Andrew and I got runny noses and watery eyes from an ill-fated hay ride through the weeds of Goshen (yes, that is actually the name of the area) and then drove back to Rexburg to go to lunch with his sister Mary and her family. Craigo's (now with the stupid name of Pizza Pie Cafe) is still as great as ever.

And we finally headed up to the Scroll banquet in the MC that evening, where I got to reconnect with many of my old co-workers and share a lot of memories from the incredible four years I spent at the Scroll. I didn't take any pictures there (partly because I was so emotional the whole evening and partly because I am still self-conscious about the braces and felt awkward seeing everyone with the awful addition to my mouth), but my advisor, Brother Warnick, posted the pictures from fall 2005 and winter 2006 semester on Facebook and I thought I'd share them. This is how I'll always remember the Scroll anyway -- when everyone was so young!

I'm in the middle of the third row from the back.

Again, I'm in the third row from the back, but on the left this time.

While I was there, the Scroll went through a major transition and lost more than half of its staff because they created a new program, iComm Student Media, that allowed students to participate in advertising, broadcast journalism and design, among other aspects. So, unfortunately, these are the only photos I have of everyone together on the paper, and I cherish them.

My time at the Scroll was one of the best of my life. I made the greatest friends there, learned from incredible teachers and discovered that I really was born to be a writer. I got amazing hands-on experience with writing, editing and design that I still use every day in my job, and I have connections with my advisors and teachers today. In fact, they asked me to come back in the fall and talk to current communication students about my experience. I am beyond thrilled to come back, especially since I've wanted to teach journalism ever since I graduated but had a change of plans when grad school fell through.

If any of you are former BYU-I students who haven't had a chance to go back and visit, make the time to do it. I was never a big fan of Rexburg and was happy to get out of there and on to bigger and better things, but I miss my teachers there and am so glad I went back to see them and let them know how much they meant to me.

Andrew was surprised to find out that members of the paper were known as Scrollies, but I absolutely love the name -- and I will be a Scrollie for life. That's just how it works.