It's Finally Happening

Very rarely do I get to make a major life announcement. In fact I have blogged about the fact that most of the time things stay pretty much the same. Well life is changing for me and it is changing dramatically. I'm moving back to California, I'm starting Graduate School, and I'm doing it next month.

My brother in law Don, has been reminding me that I need to go back to school for more or less the last five years. I would continually shine him on and give him lame reasons why I hadn't applied. In December 2009 I took the GMAT, and applied to exactly one school in 2010, the University of Stockholm. I got on the waiting list, but never got off the waiting list. I had limited my options to meet basically three criteria. 1. California 2. BYU 3. Sweden. I didn't want to go to school in VA or Washington DC. I wanted to be home in California to be close to my family, or back to BYU so I could play flag football again. I also wondered what it would be like to live in Sweden without being a missionary.

In February I attended CPAC to cheer on Mitt Romney. I thought I might even get a chance to meet him. I saw him pretty close up but never got to shake his hand. Feeling slightly deflated, I went down to the convention floor to see all the vendors that had shown up. You could get t-shirts and can coolers, and buy all sorts of books, mostly junk I wasn't interested in. There was however one booth that interested me greatly. The booth for the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. For those of you who aren't familiar with Pepperdine, its campus is located in one of the most beautiful places in all of California and looks over the Pacific Ocean. It definitely met my criteria of being in CA. I met the dean and we spoke a bit. I told her how my brother in law was an alum of the business school and how excited I was the BYU and Pepperdine would be in the same athletic conference. She told me to definitely apply, that I could use my GMAT score ( I didn't really want to take the GRE) and to keep in touch. I didn't get to meet Mitt but this seemed like a very good consolation.
 I made sure to email the Dean a few days later to thank her for her time.

Flash forward a few weeks. I am home for the weekend with the family, and we have an absolute blast. Watching BYU games on TV. Eating together, and just enjoying being around one another. As well as DC has treated me, I knew that I wanted to be home. I wanted to watch the Angels and Lakers at my convenience and at a reasonable hour. I wanted to got to Gavin's little league games, and be there for birthdays.

Interestingly enough my sister Jennifer was having many of the same feelings I was. That liked Dallas, had a lot of friends there, but every time her little family came to CA, they didn't want to leave. She wanted the cousins to be close, to eat at In-N-Out (although Dallas put one in) or Rubio's, and enjoy all the things the Southland has to offer. Jenn and Marc were talking seriously about making the move. I was more resigned than ever to get my butt in gear and get back closer to home.

I am thankful for my current job. As everyone knows this is a bad economy and finding a job can be tough. But lately I had really started to hate it. It definitely wasn't what I wanted to be doing. I just knew that it would be irresponsible to quit and not have anything lined up.

When we found out that Don was sick, I felt very strongly that I needed to be home with my family. Shannon and I went for a visit for Memorial Day, and Jennifer was there as well. It just made so much sense for me to go back.

Jennifer and Marc put their house up for sell, and within days it was sold. I got the last part of my application done, my letters of recommendation were in, and now it was time to wait.

I hate to be disappointed, so I tried to do my best to keep my expectations low. I applied to one other school and found out I was on the waiting list. They told me that there was a chance I would still get in but it was possible that I would be made aware of their decision a little as one week before school started.

One afternoon I had just had a particularly lousy morning at work. I came and looked at my cell phone and saw that there was a missed call from a 310 number. I wondered if it was Pepperdine. Sure enough, there was a message from the Dean, asking me to call her back. My heart was pounding, still not wanting to be disappointed, I told myself "Peter, if you don't get in, it's not the end of the world." I was cautiously optimistic because I figured there is no way that they would call me to tell me I hadn't been accepted.


The Dean told me, congratulations on your acceptance, and informed me that I had been given a $20,000 scholarship. I felt a mixture of joy and relief. I called Shannon, my Dad, and my sisters to let them know about the news. Everyone was so happy for me. Chrissi even cried. For the first time since the summer before my mission we would all be living in Southern California. Shannon brought me balloons in the Pepperdine colors.

Once I made my phone calls, I jumped on the Pepperdine website to make sure that they had intramural flag football. I am happy to report, that they do. I wanted to celebrate this momentous occasion so Dan, Joe, Amber, Shannon, and I went out to Ruth's Chris. I figured you only get accepted to Graduate school once, you might as well celebrate it with steak and lobster. That is just what I did.

 

There is still a lot to figure out. Orientation is on August 22nd. So sometime between now and then I'll be moving. I already have someone lined up to take my room here. I think I'll be living on campus at least the first semester, and attending the Santa Monica 3rd ward. Shannon is not thrilled about me leaving but she is happy for me. We're going to do the long distance thing, which should be a lot of fun.* In fact I already have the speech I am going to give to my buddies before I leave. It's inspired by the first 1:15 of this video.

I am excited to go, and be a full time student. I am hoping I can learn to surf, like I learned to Snow Board at BYU. I'll miss my friends in DC but not much else.


*Probably not all that fun.