Cougar Crash Episode 3- Friends

Grace and Hannah talk about the importance of making friends and having fun in college. They share some stories of spontaneous adventures they had with their friends, such as playing a song loudly on campus and going swing dancing with strangers. They also discuss the fun they have playing Frisbee and participating in recreational sports. The conversation then shifts to a prank war that started between them and their male friends, which has been ongoing for six months. They share some of the pranks they have pulled on each other, including hiding signs and putting a fake jar of peanut butter filled with flour. Hey guys, it's Grace. And Hannah. And we're back with another episode of Cougar Crash. Let's go. On today's episode we're going to be going over things to do with your friends and how to make friends. So let's jump right in. Yep. Alright. Okay, today we have some guest people with us. We have Josh Larson and Carly Robinson. You guys want to say hi? Howdy. How's it going? Yep. So these are some of our really good friends. And they are, I think, the best people to talk about friends and doing things that are fun. So we're just going to jump right into some of the things that we've done to make our freshman year really good. And I think that just getting your ideas going can help you make your own fun your freshman year. So, alright Hannah, what's a story that comes to mind when you think of making fun freshman year? Definitely those spontaneous moments that you're just like, hey, do you want to go do this? And you're like, sure. So one of those spontaneous fun nights was when me and Carly, so there's a song called The 21st Night of September. We all know it, we all know it. And on the 21st night of September, me and Carly naturally went out across campus to play this song loud and just were jamming out. It was an absolute party. I remember we pulled out the speaker and we had it at full volume and I think we played the song probably over 50 times. And every time, as we were dancing all around campus, it was dark outside already. People were kind of slowing down for the night going back to their apartments and people were definitely looking at us weird. But the most fun part of it is that we did not care. Oh yeah, for sure. It was so fun. Some people were weirded out, but some people were like, hey, this is kind of fun. Yeah, the people that joined in were like, wow, they seem like really cool people. Oh yeah, for sure. That's one thing I love about BYU is you can get a lot of clean fun that seems random, but people totally buy into it. What about you, Josh? What would you say is one of those random things that you've done that has made college a little more bearable? There's a lot, but I think one of my personal favorites was this one time I came home from helping with some church stuff. I got home at like 9.30 and my roommate Steven is dressed in like full cowboy gear. And I'm like, what is going on? And he just walked up and was like, hey, do you want to go swing dancing with Total Strangers right now? And I'm like, oh my gosh. Yeah, sure. What are we doing? So it was just a lot of fun to be able to just go, met a few people who I have probably since forgotten. But it was just, you know, it was a fun time to just go and de-stress a little bit. It was good. Did you dress up? I didn't have much, but I wore what I could. I think I had jeans and a flannel shirt. But Steven had like his Texas belt buckle. He had a Texas belt buckle. Yeah, he turned part of his mission in Texas. I think he actually had the cowboy hat too, so it was pretty fun. Dang, I wish I had seen the getup. Yeah. That's great. Another thing that we've done as friends that I think I would recommend is just like some sort of recreational sport. Like my roommate and I, Kirstie, we did a flag football intramural on a whim. We lost nearly every game, but it was super fun. And then as friends, we've gotten together and we do Ultimate Frisbee. And I was wondering if you guys had anything you wanted to share about how intense Frisbee gets or your thoughts on that. I love how you all three just looked at me. Frisbee can be a lot of fun. I personally am pretty competitive when it comes to that particular sport. I think you get all of our competitive sides. Definitely caught me off. It definitely, you know, energy gets up, motivation gets up, and it can lead to some intense feelings. We haven't really ever had any anger issues with anyone. That's lasted longer than the game. Yeah, that's never caused a problem with stopping the game or anything like that. We've never had to break teams up or anything to keep playing. I don't know. You guys have been doing that since high school though, right? Yeah, I've been playing since I was eight. Growing up, my family would play every Saturday. Like Rain or Shine, we'd play every Saturday. That's so fun. Do you feel like it makes it more special to involve your friends in that? Yeah, I feel like it's kind of fun. Especially back home, before coming to college, my roommates, we all knew each other in high school. They would come to my family Frisbee games every Saturday. Now that I kind of get to do that down here, even though I'm not with my family, I feel like I'm kind of keeping my family tradition alive by playing Frisbee on Saturdays. That's cool. That's awesome. I think it's good to share good experiences with friends. There's some things that we wanted to bring up as just a good way to maybe make your semester feel a little more bearable that we've done as friends. I think you should have Carly introduce our story for today, our big headliner for this episode. Beginning or end of last semester, I guess it was October or so, we were getting ready for Thanksgiving. I don't know, there's a point in the semester when everything just kind of feels like a lot. It's stressful and there's not a lot you can do about it. I remember one of those nights and all I had been doing was reading textbooks all day and studying. I just needed to de-stress. One of the things that I personally do to de-stress is calligraphy. I was with a couple of my roommates in the dorm just doing some calligraphy. I was asking them what I should write on a piece of paper. It was close to Thanksgiving time, so I was writing things like, thankful for you and happy Thanksgiving and happy turkey. The most random things. I was asking them for requests for what I should write. For one of them, I turned to Grace and she told me to write your mom on the piece of paper. I was like, okay. So I wrote your mom. Just imagine your mom in night calligraphy. It's like bright orange. Spelled not the way you're thinking. U-R space M-O-M. Yeah, like the joke on the whole paper. Entire piece of paper filled with that. By the end of the night, we had a lot of these signs that said things like, happy Thanksgiving and your mom. We needed to do something with them. Neither Hannah or I had much else to do other than studying. We just needed a break at that point. I turned to her and I was like, hey, we should go deliver these to people. We ended up going to the boys' apartment in our ward. Just went down the hall and stuck a sign on every single door. Some of our closest guy friends, specifically Josh's room, we decided, well, they can take a joke, so we'll just give them the your mom sign. Your mom. We stuck the sign on their door and literally thought nothing of it, left, and that was it. Yeah, so Kirstie and I had been on a date. We were leaving the boys' apartment that we were at. Then we heard Josh and, was it Seth that was with you? Oh, the very first night? Yeah. I think it was Stephen. It was Stephen. They popped up and were like, what is this piece of paper? We were like, I don't know, it's probably our roommate's or something. Next thing you know, they're taking the paper and they're running down the hallway. We were like, what is happening? We chased them back to our apartment. That's when they decided to slide it back under our door. Then we knew something was up. Something was brewing. That was the point that I think we all realized that we had officially started a prank war. If there is anything that I think you should do in college, it's start a prank war. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it has made the best of friends and the worst of enemies at the same time, in the same people. Josh, don't look offended. You know I'm right. Yeah, you are. How did you guys retaliate after we left the sign in your apartment again? What was the second part? We slid it under your door early in the morning. It was early in the morning. That's when we realized we had to start getting a little more creative. The way we were returning it to her was going to get boring super fast. It escalated. I think it was the peanut butter joke. What my roommates did, I wasn't very savvy. Thomas was a genius. Thomas was a genius, as he always is. You have to understand, I live with super computers. They are always smarter than me. They had this really good idea. The girls, they all love peanut butter. We should give them a jar of peanut butter and put the sign in the peanut butter. Side note, our roommates have peanut butter every night. Peanut butter hour at 10.30pm. We all go out with peanut butter jars. We eat it with spoons and literally just talk about the day. These boys fully know it's a necessity. Can I say I started that? Hannah did. I started my love for peanut butter too. We knew they had this love for peanut butter. What we did is we took a smaller jar of peanut butter and hollowed it out. Cleaned it out. Got it nice and clean. We filled it with flour. We filled it with flour so it wouldn't make any noise inside the jar. Put the sign, wrapped it up, folded it in tin foil, put it in the flour jar. Then we dropped that inside a bigger jar of peanut butter. Warmed up the peanut butter on top so it looked like it had been unopened. Sealed the lid back on so you couldn't tell we had messed with it at all. And left it on their porch. That was so fun. That was one of my favorites, honestly, to see. That was a good one. But we did not really think this would go on as long as it has. The fact that it's still continuing. Still going. After what, like six plus months? It's been, yeah, I think six months. Yeah, it started in November, right? Yeah, so it's like six months. Yeah, six months. That's crazy. But yeah, I think, what would you say is your favorite prank that's happened since the peanut butter, Carly? I think for me, the packing peanuts prank was probably a bit rich. So we were trying to think of something kind of big and inexpensive. And we came up with the idea of basically sealing off the boys' door frame and filling it with packing peanuts. Turns out 40 gallons of packing peanuts is not even sufficient to fill the whole door frame. But we got like 45 and filled most of their door. So then when they opened their door, the packing peanuts flooded their apartment. And that was a proud moment. When I opened the door, our apartment got filled with packing peanuts. I just remember being so mad in that moment. I was just like, oh my god, you're kidding me. It was pretty amazing. Just the pink packing peanuts flooding their apartment and just hearing that from down the hall. Hearing the vacuum turn on and just the vacuum still going. Still going. Cleaning forever. It was a pretty good one. I do have to say, your retaliation after that was pretty brutal. It was, yeah. Was that the poster? No, it was midnight. And you spread the packing peanuts on our whole building. Spread the packing peanuts all throughout the hallway, left the note in a 25-pound bag of flour. And someone, who shall remain unnamed, put a rude note on the back of it. It went a little too far. It was a little too soon. It was not really in good taste. But we cut open a 25-pound bag of flour, wrapped it again in tinfoil, threw it in. But then what we did is we stitched it. We actually sewed the bag shut so you couldn't tell. That was impressive. It was fun. Yeah, but the note on the bag, they asked for the flour back. And that's where they went wrong. Because when they ask for the flour back, of course they return it. I did not ask for the flour back. It was the roommates who were saying, of course we can give you the flour back. But of course that's also not going to be as easy as you were hoping for. So that was our whole next strength. We took the 25-pound bag of flour and divided it into individual cups. There were about 70 of them. And we handed out bags of flour to everyone in our ward and everyone in their building. We met so many strangers that night. And we told all of them for the next week to deliver them bags of flour. And I'm pretty sure, when was the last time you got a bag of flour? Like two weeks ago. That was like over a month ago. So yeah, we've been getting Ziploc baggies full of flour for about a month. Random times, people will walk up to me on campus and be like, Hey, your mom said to give this to you. And I'm like, oh great. To the point where someone is holding a Ziploc bag of flour, I assume it's for me. And you don't even assume it's cocaine, you just assume it's flour. I'm like, I hope this isn't drugs, because I'm just going to snag it. I really think our peak, though, was Christmas. You guys did good on Christmas. We were thinking of good ways to get it back, and it was around Christmas time. And we had this idea, I can't remember who came up with it originally, but one of us had seen one of the Avengers movie posters. And thought to themselves, wouldn't it be hilarious if we edited that so it said your mom had a picture of all of their actual mothers, plus them, plus a few of us, on this poster. Photoshopped onto the poster. And we did it. It's like 3 feet by 5 feet or something? It's huge. So 3 foot by 5 foot poster, full color. You guys did this in like one day? Yeah. I think my roommates were in the Maker Lab in the library for like 4 hours, making that thing, designing it and getting it to look right. Facebook stalking our moms. Facebook stalking literally everything we could do to find pictures. And then we decided, well, how can we make this better? So we found all these cardboard boxes we had. We wrapped them all up. I forgot about this. We filled them with, I think you guys had given us like, sticky notes on the previous prank. So we had filled those all up. We wrapped them all with Christmas paper. So we have like 14 massive boxes just wrapped, plus a Christmas tree. We carry them all over, get it all in your guys' hallway, and that was probably the peak of our side of the prank war. I feel like that was, for us, was the peak. Just seeing your guys' reactions. I was purely confused. To opening the door and just having like massive presents and a Christmas tree right there. Like I opened it and I just couldn't say anything. I was like kind of in shock. Not to mention our neighbors were in shock as well. They left us, they ran away, I guess. We got like most of the guys in our ward, in our hallway, to help us with it. So there were like 10 of us just walking down the hallway with these huge presents, a Christmas tree, and there's these girls outside. Some of your neighbors were outside their room, and they were just like, uh. And we had to be like, don't say anything. Shut up. It worked really well. It worked luckily. Yeah. So that was a good thing. Yeah. Would you guys say like, do you feel like the prank war has gotten out of hand for you guys at any point? And like, what do you feel like the draw is for us in like staying friends while still like pulling pranks? Like what do you feel like keeps people friendly without going too far? Yeah, the balance. I see some competitive staring. I just, I feel like the line is, I feel like the minute you are intentionally and knowingly damaging something that someone else paid for and cares about, that's when you've got to budge. I think it also really helps that we've gotten to know each other so well, and we know each other personally. Yeah, we know where the lines are for each individual. And in general, our friend group, we tend to joke with each other a lot, and we're kind of brutal to each other, but in a fun, loving way. In the most loving way. In the most loving way. Like we can roast each other completely, but at the end of the day, we all know we're best friends. Yeah. Like it doesn't matter. Not a thing. Yeah. That is good, and I think that's important to know, like where your boundaries are with your friends. Honestly, I think that's what's made it so fun, is because we know each other's boundaries, and we just stayed within and just had so much fun. Yeah. Going back to like, BYU is a place to have good, clean fun. Like you don't have to worry about drugs or alcohol nearly as much as you would in any other college. Sober campus. I guess another question for our guest today is, how do you feel like your encounters and experiences with your friends have shaped your overall experience at BYU? I think, I mean, my experience at BYU without friends would not be nearly as good. I think the reason that I love it here is because of the people that I interact with. I remember, I mean, I'm from Indiana, and so I came a long way to college, and like the first few weeks before I had good relationships with friends were really hard. But as soon as I like, built relationships with my roommates and then branched out and had friends in the wards, like, immediately things were so much better. And, I don't know, there's just special connections here and it makes it such a really good place. Yeah. I'm lucky enough to have grown up with four of the five guys I room with. But, and so we were already pretty close before, so I was lucky enough to come down with that support system, plus two of my siblings are here. Being a return missionary, I have a lot of companions and friends, and a pretty good networking at BYU, but really it's been meeting my friends in the wards, specifically you guys, and, like, yeah, really it's just been, it's made it so much more fun. Because BYU, it's no secret to anyone here that it's a pretty academically rigorous college. Really there's no such thing as an easy class. They're all just hard in different ways. But I feel like having friends that make it fun and plan fun things to look forward to really just make it so much more worth it. It's been so nice. I think another thing that I think about is just like, for some people, like, it's not the same. Some people do not enjoy BYU nearly as much, and I think that just shows that you really have to put in the effort to make those friends and make those connections, because that's super important. Like with you guys, it's been, it wasn't just spontaneous. It took you guys, like, inviting us over for the waffles, like, Sundays. Yeah, waffle-y Sundays. Yeah, you invited us over for waffles one Sunday, we invited you guys over for Frozen and Chosen one Sunday, just where we have homemade ice cream and watch the Frozen and Chosen. Watch the Chosen. And it took a few of those before we were like, yeah, we found our friends. And that's what really, like, got the ball rolling with everything. I think once you do find them, you know. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That is so true. I guess for our audience today, like, how would you recommend making friends, like, starting that spark? I think don't be afraid to just try to be friends with everyone. Because, I mean, obviously not every friendship is going to be perfect, but if you're trying to be friends with everyone, then you're going to find your people. If you're not reaching out and trying to branch out and find new people, then, like, it's not going to happen. But if you are, if you're really just giving time to everyone and reaching out and inviting people over to do random things, then, like, you're going to find your people. I think, like, first, I've never seen anyone who's going to, like, complain about you wanting to be their friend. Like, I've never, no one, everyone wants friends. So very few people are going to be like, oh, sorry, I have too many friends. Like, I can't, I can't fit you into my agenda. I have a maximum capacity. I have a maximum capacity. I can't, sorry, I can't take you as, like... You can only have so many friends. But I, really one thing that I've found, if you want genuine friends, you have to be your genuine self. Because if you're trying to impress a group that you're genuine, that you're just not a part of, you're trying to be someone you're not, people, people are pretty good at spotting outfits. They may know when you're not being honest and when you're not being who you are. So a huge key for it, and what I've really seen, is down to, like, good people attract good people. So if you're a good person, and you want to have good friends, you won't really have a problem if you're willing to put in some effort. I know for me, too, what's super nice about making friends in college is, like, I'm the only one from my graduating class in high school that's here at BYU. And so, like, I needed a fresh start. And so I think college is a wonderful opportunity to really reinvent yourself and become that better person that you want to be. And I know, like, because I wanted to be a better person, I also attracted better people to be my friends. Like, I'm not settling for less, and I feel like we've all helped each other grow. Like, despite packing peanuts and late nights and all the stupid things you've done, I feel like I'm becoming a better person because of the people I surround myself with. And I think that's essential to my academic success as well. Like, I'm becoming a better student because of that, too. Yeah. I completely agree. I came from a school that has a lot of kids, and I'm, like, only an... My home home is an hour away, so I have a lot of people from high school that are here at BYU. And I have found it really nice to kind of move away from some high school friends and just become my own person because you can still maintain those connections, but it's always important to keep growing, and that means finding new people. Mm-hmm. All right, I think we're going to take a quick shift to the last portion of our podcast today. And with making friends, I feel like there's a lot of pressure here at BYU with the dating culture. And I was just wondering, like, initially, before we dive into, like, the questions, like, what are your guys' thoughts on dating culture at BYU? And, like, how would you recommend to incoming freshmen how to cope and accept or deal with that? The biggest thing I would say is don't...do not rush into anything. I feel like, specifically at BYU, there's kind of a culture of, like... and maybe it's just college in general, you know, people, kids kind of being on their own for the first time, and you're suddenly surrounded by a lot more people. The size difference is huge, and so there's a lot more people for you to date and interact with, and especially as a return missionary, and I hate saying that because it's too much, but, like, you're kind of hammered with this idea of, like, you go home from your mission and you get married. And, like, that's what kind of everyone tells you is just like, yep, that's what you do. And so you end up with this batch of missionaries that comes home that are like, oh, well, all I know to do is get married because that's all I was taught to do when I get home. And honestly, I think that's not good. We're seeing, actually, right now, I think there's actually more divorced people in the church than there are married people, which is really pretty sad. So I think my biggest thing with this dating is don't, just take your time. You're a freshman in college. You have so much college ahead of you. Don't rush into something just to have something. Take your time. Find who's right. Find what's right for you. I think also going along with just the idea of making friends is just, like, branching out and meeting new people is an important part of dating, too. Like, you don't need to be with one person at the very beginning. That's not necessarily even the goal. So honestly, when you start dating, stay to have fun, and that's really allowed. Go meet new people. That's really, really good. Those are good thoughts. Thank you. With meeting new people, what would you say your best college date ideas would be for people starting to get into the dating culture? What's an ideal, fun first date? What are some ideas for that? One thing I haven't done yet, but me and a good buddy had the idea, is actually a paper airplane making competition. I did that on a date. It was so fun. See who can make the best paper airplane and which couple can get it the furthest. I mean, the biggest thing, I feel like, especially with dating as a freshman, is we're all broke as heck. We have little to no resources, so we're kind of desperate. Just get fun. Get creative. People like doing fun, interesting things. Make art with pancakes. We've done that. I mean, just do fun stuff. I think also, just like, we've done a lot of big group roommate dates, and those are some of the most fun dates, because even if the date itself, or your date is not the most fun person, you're still with your best friends, and you can still have a good time. I think group dates are an awesome way to go. One of my favorite dates that we did was around Christmas time, when we made royal icing cookies, and every single person was making cookies. The frosting was everywhere. Some of them turned out really, really good, and some of them were unique and special. They were good. It was so much fun. Just seeing that side of everyone was really fun. Just getting to know people in that big group setting for us to spend time around, too. I'm grateful for that setting, too, because I feel like group dates with your friends make dates a lot less pressure. I feel like sometimes you hear about people going on dates, and when I get asked on a date, sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, this is a lot of pressure. But when you're with good people, and you're with a group you're comfortable with, it's not a lot of pressure. It's just getting to know somebody in a slightly different way. But first you need a friendship before you need anything else to form. Can I just chime in on that for a second? I have had the unfortunate experience of getting friend zoned. Oh, the fingers are out. He's counting. Three times since coming to BYU. Oh no. And the hardest thing about the friend zone is if you're not friends, the friend zone cannot exist. That is true. So true. You have to have an actual friendship with someone in order for things to not be awkward if they do go south. Otherwise you just have this kind of awkward acquaintance that you're like, oh, hey, I tried to date you once, and you didn't want that. So just focus on being friends, and I think dating comes naturally with that. Yeah. I kind of see ideas taking their time. Don't rush it. Yeah, don't rush it. Just have fun. That's excellent. Looks like we're pretty close to out of time, so do you guys have any last thoughts for our audience about the social atmosphere at BYU? Any recommendations or bewareness? I would say college is supposed to be fun. While this is a great school, and this is a hard school, you only have so much time in college to make memories and have fun and make new friends. Because eventually we're all going to graduate, and the sad reality is a lot of us won't see each other again. So now's the time to build those memories to make sure that doesn't happen. If you're not building connections here, then this time is just going to be a bore to look back on. Don't let it be a bore. I think education should be a priority, but your social life should be a priority too. That's important. Start a prank war. Go have fun with friends. Be spontaneous, I think. Those are some of the best memories. My whole life has just been this year with friends. Go on spontaneous trips in the lab. Do fun things. That's my goal for today, do fun things. Yeah, we just learned that. Friends become family in college, so make the most of it. Any thoughts, Hannah? Totally close? Amen to everything said. Nice. All right, well, we'll see you guys next time on Cougar Crash. Thanks all for joining. Thank you guys for coming today too. Of course. Bye, everyone. Bye.