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Becky Poulson

Becky Poulson



Hometown: Mission Viejo, California

Major: Exercise Science (I want to go into Physical Therapy)

Minor: French Teaching

Some people grow up with a dream college in their head since age four, but I never really thought about where I would go to college. Right before my senior year, however, my brother came home filled with stories from his first year at BYU, and from then on, BYU sounded like the right option for me. First of all, I liked the fact that students do not need to know what career path they want starting from day one. As an incoming freshman, I had no idea what I wanted to major in, but BYU offers such a wide variety of classes and majors that I knew I would eventually find something I liked. Along with the academic side of things, I was also attracted to the social atmosphere at BYU. Everyone on campus is friendly and helpful, and I wanted to be surrounded by people who have the same standards as me and would help me be a better person. The final reason why I chose BYU was because I wanted to experience learning in an environment where the professors strengthen students’ testimonies with knowledge of the world, instead of testing students’ beliefs and trying to use education to pull students away from religion. BYU has been practically everything I hoped for and more. It has been such an uplifting, fun experience, and I would not trade it for anything.

In high school, I experienced my fair share of incredibly difficult tests; however, my teachers assigned so many other projects and papers that students could fail a test and still do okay in the class. Once I got to BYU, though, I soon discovered that college was much different; three or four tests could make up almost my entire grade with very few extra assignments to provide cushioning. Each test seemed more like an AP test than a simple midterm, and at first, I felt extremely worried about what would happen to my grades after I took my first set of tests. I did not want to find out what would happen if I did not study enough so my friends and I set up study groups, and I made flash cards that I could carry with me and study whenever I had a spare moment. It was so helpful to discuss concepts with other people, and the repetition of flash cards solidified concepts in my mind. I definitely struggled more with some tests than others, but if I went to study groups and made flash cards, I found that I always did better than if I thought I could get away with high school study habits of simply reviewing my notes the night before.
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