Your experience at the U

I had many great memories of my time at the U, and some sad. Sad would be the day my sociology professor died in front of the class.  He was writing on the chalk board and had a heart attack or something. The chalk line literally stopped mid-word and went down off the board.  My buddy turned to me and said, “Round Table Pizza?”  

I remember being one of two people in the student section, in the snow at a football game. The other person was my best friend. 

I fondly remember dating two Crimson Line ladies at the same time. 😉

I studied Mechanical Engineering and have fond memories of Dr. DeVries. He was a legend in the engineering department. He had a genuine passion for teaching and had a plethora of great quotes over the years. Loved that guy. He retired just a few years ago after a half century of teaching.

I spent countless hours in the Warnock Engineering Building. Most days, I arrived on campus at 7:00am and didn’t leave until after 9:00pm. So much homework.

Engineering was hard, but I made a lot of friends, many who I still talk to today.

Loved my time at the U. My degree set me up in a great career and established my lifelong love for University and its sports programs.

I had a class with Zane Beadles in 2008. He was awesome and I admired him for majoring in engineering while playing football. 

I attended the U for both my undergrad (BS Economics) and graduate work (MBA). I was a husband and father during both stints, working full-time, so didn’t get to participate in the student life.

But, I loved my time at the U, loved walking through campus, especially during the early Spring and Fall mornings. I made a point to walk the grounds as much as possible during my last semesters, just to take in the beauty and serenity before I wouldn’t be there any more.

Favorite professor during my undergrad was Richard Fowles. He made econ fun, and really sparked my love of formulas and equations and how they can help one understand the decision-making process.

For my masters, there are far too many great professors to just pick one. I completed the Executive program, so was taught by the likes of Drs. Bakhsheshy, Schaeffer, Allen, and others. All were great.

Dr Pingree was my Poli-Sci professor.  I loved how engaging his classes were and how he taught me how to learn.  Also had several interactions with Taylor Randell when he was at the business school.  I think we struck gold with that guy. He loves students and wants to make sure they succeed.

Spent a lot of time in the HEB (Henry Eyring Building). Realized there was a ghost in the basement there. Hence the name.

I…have no time at the U.  🙁

However, I’m the only person in my entire extended family who did not graduate from the U.  Wife, Mom, Dad, MIL, FIL, Brother, Sis in law, Aunts, Uncles…everyone went there, except me.  I ended up with a soccer scholarship to a DII school in Colorado and decided to give that a go instead.  

So I’ve been a Utah fan my entire life because of the family ties, but I never actually went there myself.  I’ve often wondered if there’s a way for me to take one or two random courses, just to say I went.  

Mark T. Nielsen, Advanced Human Anatomy. One of those professors loving what he does inspiring students to work hard and learn in a very time consuming, challenging course.

I have no idea how to spell his name, but Sudar Mimbol, or something close to that was a professor in the U Accounting department. He was extremely knowledgeable and extremely hard to understand. He completely changed the way I attended class. In the 70s the business students took pages of notes every class period. To stay with the professor I put my pencil down and simply listened intently to understand him. Understanding jumps when you listen instead of copy. In IT grad school I probably took 2 pages of notes total, mostly deadlines or date events. I am convinced my understanding improved greatly due to that change.

Excellent topic, Dysto – a genuine thanks for posting. 

Some folks already posted a few things, but I also wanted to say that I loved walking the campus. Loved in the dorms or apartments and would often walk back from class as opposed to taking the shuttles. When I did take the shuttles, I made friends with all of the bus drivers. People thought I was weird but no one ever chatted with them or told them thank you – they loved it. 

Started in engineering but switched to business. Never knew Zane but always respected him for being an engineering guy while playing football. Did have a class or two with Sakoda though. 

In my one semester of engineering, my physics professor was demonstrating a concept by lighting a flame in a giant tube – ended up going up in flames and we all had to evacuate the building. It was a small fire but it was pretty crazy. 

2008 MUSS tickets are still the best $25 I ever spent. Enough said. 

Didn’t really enjoy school at the time, it was a means to end. Favorite class was an elective on the concept of Power taught by Sandomir. Loved it. Over the years I’ve grown to love reading and learning more but didn’t enjoy it much at the time – wish I did looking back. School taught me how much I didn’t know. I also learned how to learn – that was the revelation for me. 

My handle is FtheY because of a sign we made for the 2006 BYU game our freshman year – it literally said “F the Y” and was quickly confiscated.  

My buddy (the one that came up with F the Y) and I attended all the basketball games during the Boylen rebuild. I swear he and I were the entire MUSS at the time other than the students that were on the MUSS board. Several awesome memories here – we got a note from the Mountain West that we were too rowdy as a student section….we kept it PG but heckled the crap out of opposing teams. That was validation, and a great move by Boylen, to put us above the opposing teams bench. Funny because we were so small. 

We won a raffle to go into the basketball locker room before the game. Boylen gave his pep talk, had a quick prayer, then came out of the tunnel with the team. Asked Marshall Henderson how he felt and he said “just poppin, just poppin” – dude was bouncing off the walls. 

Before a game, the court side seats had tshirts on them. Marshall walks up and starts throwing them to the students saying that we needed free shirts way more than the folks that could afford those seats. Haha. 

Beat Oklahoma when Blake Griffin came to town. I think we he’d him scoreless too and we let him know it….received a death stare from him when he sat down on the bench. 

Played BYU at home with Jimmer. My buddy found out that apparently he missed a previous practice or game due to stomach issues….but also turned 21 at the time. During a timeout we yelled down at him and asked him if he had the beer flu – he made eye contact with us, smiled and sipped his Gatorade. 

How crazy. Hadn’t thought about some of these things in years. 

Zrinka Despotovic was a young 20 something professor from Croatia that didn’t wear a bra when she taught my business calculus class in a white t shirt. Somehow I pulled an A. That is all. 

The on campus golf course. Getting nine holes in with a golf bag full of beers. Thankfully never hit any cars, came damn close though.

Dr. James Mayfield, he taught a “Rural development in third world countries” class I think his son was in my class. i only took it because it was an elective in my International Relations Certificate with my Poli Sci degree. That class and what i learned has affected the way I view the world, interpersonal communications, and even how I interpreted classes in my MBA.

I still remember one of his questions was Would you be able to teach about the importance of micro-loans to a culture which believes in female genital mutilation? It seems like a really odd question, but he wanted you to think about what was important to you. What were your views you drew a line in the sand for? And then he would help you understand how you could approach the problem from a different angle. Lots of self-reflection about the world in that class.

I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the Econ Prof Hans Ehrbar. I took his class on “Das Kapital” and it changed my entire view of the world and my place in it. I mean, he lived in a freaking commune downtown somewhere! I’ll never forget him saying that as an economic system, communism had given up just a few years too soon. Today we have computers that are powerful enough to understand an economy pretty well. Oh well.

My 1st semester (Fall quarter, 1995) at the U, I had 2 classes with the same professor:  Latin 1 and Greek Mythology, with Dr. Philip Spann.  I wasn’t a Classical Civilizations major (these were just fulfilling some Gen.Ed. requirements for graduation for me), but that guy was the most fascinating educator I’d ever had the pleasure of learning from.  If it weren’t for the fact that there’s not a lot of potential in high-earning careers for people with degrees in that field, I would have changed my major.

I attended the U before most of you were born- BS, Zoology in 1962, MS, Zoology in 1964. Stephen D. Durant was a marvelous professor and I took all of his courses, which were all evolution courses:  Mammalogy, Man, Vertebrate Phylogeny, Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy. His course “Man” dealt with evolution of primates. Anthropology majors had to take it, so the class was big. At the end he was talking about breast shape in different groups of modern human women. When he was finished he leaned over the lectern and said “and some of you girls are trying to fool me”.