You’re living in your own private Idaho[1]This 1980 song is of course not about the physical, mapped-out state of Idaho, but a certain state of mind. But it still doesn’t hurt to actually live in Idaho for a stretch, to fully understand … Continue reading
Living in your own private Idaho (oh)[2]To be living in your own private Idaho is to see signs for Beaverdick Park and Butte, Montana, and be weirdly surrounded by people who don’t understand why that’s so funny.
Underground like a wild potato[3]It feels like a strange joke when you first arrive in Idaho to see all the license plates read “Famous Potatoes”–a frank admission that there is nothing else going for the … Continue reading
Don’t go on the patio[4]Ernest Hemingway moved to Idaho to be a hermit and then kill himself. That is, he had been stuck in his own private Idaho before he physically moved there. Don’t go on the patio, indeed!
Beware of the pool, blue bottomless pool[5]I should here emphasize that I chose to attend BYU-Idaho, of my own free will and choice! My parents were actually angling for me to choose BYU-Provo, where they had met. But no, I was fresh off my … Continue reading
It leads you straight right through the gate that opens on the pool[6]One Friday night in Rexburg, my roommates and I visited our FHE sisters, and we tried to eat raw flour and blow it on a lit match, cause we’d seen on YouTube that such could make a little flame. It … Continue reading
You’re living in your own private Idaho[7]Another time my crush blew me off for a date with someone else, so my roommates and I drive around town in someone’s car with a loudspeaker he bought off eBay, and broadcast “No PDA!” at all … Continue reading
You’re living in your own private Idaho[8]Those same roommates once poured a bowl of snow on me while I was in the shower at the end of a long day—cause again, there was nothing else to do. I ended up chasing them outside in the dark with … Continue reading
Keep off the path,[9]I began to suspect that BYUI’s commitment to free agency was more talk than action when the city of Rexburg used eminent domain to demolish the only bar in town to create a new highway entrance. … Continue reading beware of the gate (your own private Idaho)[10]Rexburg was a town wherein the opening of a new Applebees was cause for celebration, such that you couldn’t get reservations there for months. That perhaps gives context for why, every single … Continue reading
Watch out for signs that say “hidden driveways” (your own private Idaho)[11]My on-campus job was in the Men’s Locker room, checking out lockers, towels, and the required tshirts and gym shorts. This meant I had to enforce the college’s shorts ban. And sure enough, at the … Continue reading
Don’t let the chlorine in your eyes (woah, woah)
Blind you to the awful surprise (woah-oh-oh-oh-oh, yeah)[12]The Dean of students once kindly consented to meet with me about the Honor Code; I was sincerely seeking explanations for why the Dress & Grooming standards were stricter there than even at the … Continue reading
That awaits for you at the bottom of the bottomless blue, blue, blue pool[13]When the shorts ban ended in 2023—to bring all the BYU campus dress codes into conformity with each other—I suppose I should’ve celebrated; but instead I was only exasperated, that it had taken … Continue reading
You’re livin’ in your own private Idaho, Idaho
You’re out of control, the rivers that roll[14]The Snake River is legitimately pretty, admittedly; indeed, if you’re outdoorsy, Idaho can be a genuinely beautiful state to live in; but it’s all the cold beauty of a natural environment … Continue reading
You fell into the water and down to Idaho[15]I remember landing an internship in Mexico my senior-year, and being told by the BYUI internship office that there was a small $1,000 grant I qualified for–which in Mexico, would more than … Continue reading
Get out of the stateget out of the state you’re in[16]In a perverse sort of way, I’m grateful BYU-Idaho administration treated students so callously and indifferently; it made me want to get out of that state as quickly as possible—both … Continue reading
You better beware[17]A reminder that the Aryan Nations is still headquartered in Coeur d’Alene.
It’s also worth remembering that Ezra Taft Benson was from Idaho, and that he repeatedly called Martin Luther … Continue reading
You’re living in your own private Idaho[18]A girl that had been crushing on me for a change became my first serious post-mission girlfriend in Rexburg. I of course wondered if she was why I had felt guided by the Spirit to enroll at BYUI or … Continue reading
You’re living in your own private Idaho
Keep off the patio (your own private Idaho)[19]Had a student once in Utah who was a full fledged Obama birth certificate truther. You guessed it, from Idaho!
Keep off the path (your own private Idaho)[20]Alternate terms for Rexburg coined by the student body: BYU-I-Do, Ice-burg, Sex-burg
The lawn may be green, but you better not be seen (woah, woah)[21]This likely goes without saying, but BYU-I (or most anywhere else in Idaho not named Boise or Pocatello) is not a place where you can be openly LGBTQ, not even to the subdued levels of the Provo … Continue reading
Walkin’ through the gate that leads you down (woah-oh-oh-oh-oh, yeah)[22]A roommate of mine told me once of his Sociology professor, who brought up in class that there are no homeless in Rexburg. The students figured it must be because the local Church community was so … Continue reading
Down to a pool fraught with danger, it’s a pool full of strangers[23]The administration made a big deal about “The Spirit of Ricks” when I was at Rexburg–that is, the supposed sense of kinship and easy friendliness that permeated the campus. Of … Continue reading
Hey! You’re living in your own private Idaho[24]I am dead serious when I say that every Rexburg graduate who has remained engaged and active in the Church has done so in spite of BYU-Idaho, not because of it. You know the old joke, that the Church … Continue reading
Where do I go from here to a better state than this?[25]The way you get out of Idaho is the same way you get out of any funk: you shift your focus to others, instead of yourself. That means you need to show compassion for others, and love them for who … Continue reading
Well, don’t be blind to the big surprise
Swimming ’round and ’round like the deadly hand of a radium clock
At the bottom of the pool
I-I-Idaho, I-I-Idaho
Woah-oh, woah, woah-oh-oh
Woah-oh-oh-oh-oh
Ah-ah-ah-ah
Ah-ah-ah-ah
Get out of the state (ah-ah-ah-ah)
Get out of the state (ah-ah-ah-ah)
You’re living in your own private Idaho
Livin’ in your own private Idaho[26]Quality of instruction at BYUI was excellent, by the way, I felt well prepared for grad school (even if that explicitly wasn’t a priority for the administration); wish they treated their faculty … Continue reading
References
| ↑1 | This 1980 song is of course not about the physical, mapped-out state of Idaho, but a certain state of mind. But it still doesn’t hurt to actually live in Idaho for a stretch, to fully understand what an Idaho state of mind even means. Having graduated from the Church’s own BYU-Idaho back in the Kim Clark years immediately following the ascension of David A. Bednar, I think I can speak with some authority of what it means to live in your own private Idaho. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | To be living in your own private Idaho is to see signs for Beaverdick Park and Butte, Montana, and be weirdly surrounded by people who don’t understand why that’s so funny. |
| ↑3 | It feels like a strange joke when you first arrive in Idaho to see all the license plates read “Famous Potatoes”–a frank admission that there is nothing else going for the place.
Seriously, the state can’t brag about Yellowstone or the Tetons since they’re mostly in Wyoming anyways; they can’t brag about the low-cost of living, because it also has some of the lowest wages in the nation (I got paid $7/hour to work construction in the mid-2000s, and the state entire still follows the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 today); heck, they can’t even brag about BYU-Idaho, since it is uniformly known as just the safety school for BYU-Provo. BYU-Hawaii at least gets to be the party school; Rexburg is just 7 months of winter. That is, to feel stuck in your own private Idaho is to feel like you’ve got next-to-nothing going on in your life as well. |
| ↑4 | Ernest Hemingway moved to Idaho to be a hermit and then kill himself. That is, he had been stuck in his own private Idaho before he physically moved there. Don’t go on the patio, indeed! |
| ↑5 | I should here emphasize that I chose to attend BYU-Idaho, of my own free will and choice! My parents were actually angling for me to choose BYU-Provo, where they had met. But no, I was fresh off my mission, and after careful prayer, I chose to attend Rexburg, especially since it was the Lord’s latest university. I assumed something good must be waiting for me there!
And how did that go? Let’s put it this way: in 2004, the first Presidential election I was old enough to vote in, I very matter-of-factly voted for George W. Bush, because I came from a staunchly Republican family, in a deeply conservative community, and was now on my way to attend one of the most conservative colleges in America. Four years later, just after graduating from Rexburg, I voted for Barack Obama, and haven’t voted for a single Republican since. |
| ↑6 | One Friday night in Rexburg, my roommates and I visited our FHE sisters, and we tried to eat raw flour and blow it on a lit match, cause we’d seen on YouTube that such could make a little flame. It went about as well as you imagine. A definite low point. |
| ↑7 | Another time my crush blew me off for a date with someone else, so my roommates and I drive around town in someone’s car with a loudspeaker he bought off eBay, and broadcast “No PDA!” at all the happy couples we saw holding hands, cause there was literally nothing else to do. Also a low point. |
| ↑8 | Those same roommates once poured a bowl of snow on me while I was in the shower at the end of a long day—cause again, there was nothing else to do. I ended up chasing them outside in the dark with a baseball bat after curfew. Could’ve gotten me expelled if I’d been caught; sometimes I wish I had. |
| ↑9 | I began to suspect that BYUI’s commitment to free agency was more talk than action when the city of Rexburg used eminent domain to demolish the only bar in town to create a new highway entrance. Not that I ever intended to patronize the bar myself, but it sure felt like a frank acknowledgment from both city and college officials that they didn’t even know how to be more interesting than a cheap beer. |
| ↑10 | Rexburg was a town wherein the opening of a new Applebees was cause for celebration, such that you couldn’t get reservations there for months. That perhaps gives context for why, every single weekend in Rexburg, you could easily find carpoolers taking extra passengers down to Utah; even if you weren’t from Utah yourself, it was always worth it to get out of dodge, because even Provo was a sprawling metropolis compared to Rexburg. |
| ↑11 | My on-campus job was in the Men’s Locker room, checking out lockers, towels, and the required tshirts and gym shorts. This meant I had to enforce the college’s shorts ban. And sure enough, at the start of every semester, the incoming freshmen would come into the gym wearing shorts, to which I had to inform them that I couldn’t check them out gym shorts till they returned back to their dorms and changed back into pants. They would then, quite sensibly, complain that it didn’t make sense to change into pants in order to get shorts. I merely said those were the rules, even full well knowing these whining freshmen were right. And every time since I’ve been asked to enforce a nonsensical rule, I’ve felt like I was back in Idaho. |
| ↑12 | The Dean of students once kindly consented to meet with me about the Honor Code; I was sincerely seeking explanations for why the Dress & Grooming standards were stricter there than even at the Provo campus, for why I still had to wear pants even in 100 degree heat. Though he was never less than kind and congenial, he nevertheless couldn’t respond with anything more than vague generalities about having a “different mission.” As a recent RM, it was disappointing to realize that the Church I loved, which I had just spent two years preaching had the answers to all the profoundest questions of existence, had no satisfactory answers to their most pointless rules—that they would indeed concern itself with such trivial rules in the first places—in Idaho.
Kim Clark’s stated reason for all these extra little rules in Devotionals was that obedience in the small things would help with obedience in the big things—that if you learn to strain at gnats, you will definitely strain at camels. But all I ever learned at Idaho was that the Savior was wiser: those who strain at gnats are always the ones who swallow camels whole. |
| ↑13 | When the shorts ban ended in 2023—to bring all the BYU campus dress codes into conformity with each other—I suppose I should’ve celebrated; but instead I was only exasperated, that it had taken them so stubbornly long to admit the rule was nonsensical in the first place. |
| ↑14 | The Snake River is legitimately pretty, admittedly; indeed, if you’re outdoorsy, Idaho can be a genuinely beautiful state to live in; but it’s all the cold beauty of a natural environment utterly indifferent to your existence. The moment you get outside of any city limits anywhere in Idaho, you feel that the land is as wild and untamed as it was when the first white explorers showed up–and will continue to be long after you’ve left.
You feel that same indifference at BYU-Idaho; I was there when Kim Clark tried to require all married students to get on the school’s health insurance, even though that option was more expensive than the private options that most of these broke young married students were opting for. Certain married students were choosing to have children quickly while still in college you see, following Prophetic counsel and what not, and were naturally using the school’s insurance to afford it—which was driving up premiums for the school. Yet rather than celebrating and congratulating these students for choosing to have children early and considering the premiums to be money will spent, the school administration chose instead to see this many students having kids as a liability, and determined that it was more important to bring down premiums by requiring everyone else to pay-extra. (I think about that incident every time someone like Dallin H. Oaks complains about declining fertility rates among young adults.) The backlash among students was swift and near-universal, even among the single ones. The school administration for once had to defend itself. Did they back off and try to get more buy-in from stake-holders? Of course not, because the students were never actually considered stake-holders; we were considered product to be churned out. Administration was ultimately as indifferent to our concerns as the harsh Idaho wilderness that surrounded us. Every time since, whenever money is treated as more important than people, I’ve felt like I was back in Idaho. |
| ↑15 | I remember landing an internship in Mexico my senior-year, and being told by the BYUI internship office that there was a small $1,000 grant I qualified for–which in Mexico, would more than cover living expenses. Given how poor the wages were in Rexburg, it was money I sorely needed. However, I was denied the grant, since I had “too many credits”–as though it were a bad thing to seek higher light and knowledge. I dutifully wrote an appeals letter, respectfully explaining that I understood the purpose of the rule, that I would be out of the country and not enrolled in classes during this internship and thus would certainly not be taking anyone’s bedroom or classroom seat; that I was grateful for this opportunity and looked forward to representing the school in a foreign land, and etc. The reply came back like a broken record: I was over-credits. Grant denied.
I went to Mexico anyways. Had a great experience. Helped build my resume. Returned to Idaho flat broke. Literally one week after graduation, I got hit with a phone call from the college soliciting donations for some alumni fund. I told them I literally couldn’t donate a dime, I really was penniless. Years later when I finally had money again, I continued not to donate, because of that experience. I had fallen under water and not only did they not rescue me when I needed it most, but only asked for more. And every other time I’ve been left hanging, I felt like I was back in my own private Idaho. |
| ↑16 | In a perverse sort of way, I’m grateful BYU-Idaho administration treated students so callously and indifferently; it made me want to get out of that state as quickly as possible—both metaphorically and literally. |
| ↑17 | A reminder that the Aryan Nations is still headquartered in Coeur d’Alene.
It’s also worth remembering that Ezra Taft Benson was from Idaho, and that he repeatedly called Martin Luther King Jr. a liar, and claimed the Civil Rights movement was a communist plot to overthrow America in 1968, and that part of why Spencer W. Kimball pushed hard to end the Black Priesthood ban in 1978 is because he knew his successor Benson wouldn’t. It’s also worth recalling that the Idaho state legislature refused to adopt MLK Day till 2000, and even then would only stoop to calling it the vague, sterile “Human Rights Day.” And the poet Ezra Pound, born in Hailey, ID, grew up to become a raging anti-Semite and pro-Mussolini fascist. All these facts feel related. |
| ↑18 | A girl that had been crushing on me for a change became my first serious post-mission girlfriend in Rexburg. I of course wondered if she was why I had felt guided by the Spirit to enroll at BYUI or what have you—right up until the moment she gleefully forwarded me a cartoon about deporting all the filthy Mexicans. Years later I looked her up on Facebook and saw she’d become a Young Earth Creationist. Definitely felt like I’d dodged a bullet—I would’ve been living in my own private Idaho with her, no matter where I lived. |
| ↑19 | Had a student once in Utah who was a full fledged Obama birth certificate truther. You guessed it, from Idaho! |
| ↑20 | Alternate terms for Rexburg coined by the student body: BYU-I-Do, Ice-burg, Sex-burg |
| ↑21 | This likely goes without saying, but BYU-I (or most anywhere else in Idaho not named Boise or Pocatello) is not a place where you can be openly LGBTQ, not even to the subdued levels of the Provo campus. They’ve fired adjuncts in Rexburg for expressing even basic sympathy for that community. The B-52s would not have been able to attend BYUI, in other words.
But then, neither could the Christ on the Church logo, for that matter—violates Dress and Grooming standards. So I guess they’re in good company. |
| ↑22 | A roommate of mine told me once of his Sociology professor, who brought up in class that there are no homeless in Rexburg. The students figured it must be because the local Church community was so generous—but no, the instructor explained that Madison County had literally banned homelessness. Anyone found homeless with city limits was picked up by police and dropped off at the county border, without money or support, even if it was in the middle of a negative-20 degree winter.
|
| ↑23 | The administration made a big deal about “The Spirit of Ricks” when I was at Rexburg–that is, the supposed sense of kinship and easy friendliness that permeated the campus. Of course, as a general rule, you only make a big deal about something when you no longer have it. And indeed, the shift and expansion from cozy little Ricks College to sprawling BYU-Idaho was also a shift away from close cordiality among the student body to instead the aforementioned indifference of the administration. The faculty all learned to keep their opinions to themselves, and away from their snitching students, who in turn kept their opinions away from each other. Rexburg became a pool full of strangers. |
| ↑24 | I am dead serious when I say that every Rexburg graduate who has remained engaged and active in the Church has done so in spite of BYU-Idaho, not because of it. You know the old joke, that the Church must be true, because otherwise the missionaries would’ve destroyed it a long time ago? The same can be said of BYU-Idaho. CES would do well to reflect upon that as they agonize over current youth retention rates. |
| ↑25 | The way you get out of Idaho is the same way you get out of any funk: you shift your focus to others, instead of yourself. That means you need to show compassion for others, and love them for who they are, not merely what they can do for you. That is, you have to treat others completely different from how Idaho treats you. |
| ↑26 | Quality of instruction at BYUI was excellent, by the way, I felt well prepared for grad school (even if that explicitly wasn’t a priority for the administration); wish they treated their faculty better. |