SVU: The Late-’90s Brochure That Somehow Worked on Me

There are certain sentences a person has to earn the right to say with a straight face.

Here is one of mine:

I went to Southern Virginia University because I did not get into BYU.

There. We can all relax now.

No one needs to call a committee. No one needs to defend Provo. No one needs to produce enrollment statistics, ACT averages, alumni success stories, or a laminated chart titled “Why BYU Is Academically Impressive and Also Has Better Sweatshirts.”

I know.

I knew then.

BYU was the obvious school. The big school. The school people understood without needing a follow-up explanation. You said “BYU,” and people nodded. You said “Southern Virginia University,” and people looked at you like you had just named a bed-and-breakfast with a minor in history.

BYU had the reputation. BYU had the resources. BYU had the students whose high school transcripts probably looked like they had been assembled by a team of educational consultants and one very intense mother with a label maker.

I was not one of those students.

I was not floating through high school on a cloud of leadership positions and effortless grade-point glory. I was surviving. Middle school had taken a swing at me. High school had not exactly handed me a microphone and said, “Please, tell us who you are becoming.”

There was no extra emotional storage space for finding my voice, discovering my capabilities, or becoming the kind of student who casually says, “I’m applying to BYU,” while also knowing the odds are in her favor.

So I applied. And BYU, with whatever polite institutional language BYU uses, declined the opportunity to become part of my personal growth narrative.

Fair enough.

Then there was BYU–Idaho, which accepted me for winter semester.

Winter.

As in: later.

As in: stay home longer.

As in: remain in the house where my sister Celeste was a junior, a foreign exchange student was living with us, and I was expected to just... wait.

No.

Absolutely not.

I do not mean that in a dramatic, door-slamming, movie-trailer way. I mean it in the practical way a person knows when they are done. I could not stay home that long. I needed to leave in August. Not in a poetic sense. In a survival sense. In a “my life needs to begin before I fold inward like a lawn chair in a garage” sense.

And then came the VHS tape.

This is where the story gets very 2001.

Southern Virginia University mailed me a video. An actual VHS tape. The kind of object that now makes younger people stare blankly while the rest of us briefly smell plastic, carpet, and Blockbuster.

I later learned that my cousin Candace had sent my information to the school, which feels very on-brand for family: someone quietly interfering with your destiny using a mailing address.

I put the tape in.

And I watched.

Was it polished? No.

Was it cool? Also no.

Did it have that late-’90s/early-2000s promotional-video quality where everyone looks sincere, slightly over-lit, and dressed like they are about to attend both class and a youth leadership luncheon?

Yes.

Completely.

And somehow, it worked.

There were students talking about the school. There were professors talking about students as if students were actual human beings and not just names attached to tuition payments. There was talk of service. There was the small student body. There was the feeling that you could walk onto that campus and be noticed.

And then there was the hill.

That view of the hill up to the school did something to me.

It was not flashy. It was not trying to be Provo. It was not saying, “Look at our massive campus and our national reputation and our students who probably know how to use a planner correctly.”

It was saying something much quieter.

Come here.

Start here.

You can climb this.

By the time the VHS stopped, I knew.

I was going.

Not because SVU was secretly better than BYU. This is not that essay. This is not a hidden attack on BYU wrapped in Virginia scenery and unresolved admissions feelings.

BYU was better by plenty of measurable standards. I am not pretending otherwise. BYU had the name, the scale, the academics, the sports, the network, the marriage market, the whole polished ecosystem. For a lot of young people, it was exactly the right place to get a good education, find their people, grow up, pair off, and buy kitchen appliances sooner than expected.

Wonderful.

Truly.

But I did not need the biggest school.

I needed the school small enough to catch me.

I needed professors who might notice whether I was speaking up. I needed a campus where I could not fully hide. I needed a place where being overlooked was harder because there were not enough people around to overlook everybody efficiently.

SVU gave me that.

It gave me a beginning that did not require me to arrive already impressive.

That mattered.

Because I was not arriving as the confident girl with the polished transcript and the clear plan. I was arriving as someone who had spent years trying to get through the day without becoming too visible in the wrong way. I was arriving tired. I was arriving unsure. I was arriving with more inside me than I knew how to use.

And somehow, this tiny school in Buena Vista, Virginia, with its hill and its earnest VHS tape and its not-BYU status, became the place where I started becoming more myself.

I found pieces of my voice there.

I found confidence there.

I found out that I had thoughts worth saying out loud.

I found out that I could be more than the girl who had survived school. I could be a person who participated. A person who noticed. A person who wrote. A person who belonged somewhere without having to compete with an entire stadium of more obvious choices.

That is the funny thing about the schools that are not everyone’s first answer.

Sometimes they become the right answer.

SVU was not the glamorous choice. It was not the school that made people say, “Oh wow,” with instant recognition. It was not the school that required me to pretend I had been choosing between several elite options and, after much prayerful spreadsheeting — no, wait, we are not doing that — after much careful consideration, selected the humble Virginia path.

No.

The truth is messier and better.

I did not get into BYU.

I could not wait until winter.

My cousin sent my name somewhere.

A VHS tape showed up.

I watched a hill.

And in August 2001, I found myself on the steps at One University Hill in Buena Vista, Virginia.

Not because it was the obvious place.

Because it became mine.

And honestly, for a school brochure, that is a pretty good closing line.

And to my BYU brother-in-law, who once mocked SVU right in front of me: your objection has been noted, carefully considered, and rejected on the grounds that this is my brochure. He is welcome to write his own brochure, preferably somewhere far away from One University Hill.