Dear you,

I can't say that I've ever been in your situation, but I have had experiences where relationships with other people didn't so much crumble as violently explode, and even with years of reflection, I can't see any way to have avoided it.

The hard thing about dealing with people is you have no control over them. This lack of control over people naturally gives rise to lack of control over situations. People always say to do your best, but don't include the reality that even after your best, things can still suck. Sometimes there is no path we can choose that will have a positive outcome. And we just have to live with that.

But this doesn't sound like a situation where it was so much a strict question of you doing your best as it was of you doing your best to do what's right. In the Church it's often repeated that people who follow the Spirit will be granted ineffable peace and happiness, but I don't actually believe that. Perhaps wickedness never was happiness, but that doesn't mean righteousness is. In fact, I believe that doing what's right can result in us being downright miserable, and having a worse quality of life than if we'd simply allowed ourselves to bend. But if there weren't people willing to sacrifice their own happiness for what's right, the world would be a sadder place. Take Martin Luther King Jr. He probably could have lived a significantly less stressful, more comfortable, happier (certainly longer) life if he hadn't become a social activist. Needless to say the US would be much worse if Dr. King had chosen this route.

What I'm trying to get at here is that there are things worth sacrificing everything for, including our own happiness. I believe that 'rightness' is one of those things.

I'm sorry that you're now experiencing anxiety and depression directly because you did the right thing. However, only you can say whether or not this price is too steep, and whether you'd make the same choice again.

I don't know if your career future will be permanently blighted. My intuition is that it's not. Regardless, you can't change the past now, and should act in accordance with what will maximize your opportunities in the present, even if it opens you up to further contact with those individuals (though I'm not saying that's necessarily the optimal path for you). 

In closing, I'd like to advise talking to a therapist, as they will be able to help alleviate your depression and anxiety far better than any answer I can write will.

Good luck, my friend.

~Anathema

Dear Decision Maker,

It's awesome that you got so many college credits in high school! However, as Anathema points out below, high school credits, while valuable in giving you experience and possibly getting you out of a few classes, don't really affect how long you'll take to graduate. Most people still take at least 4 years to graduate, regardless of how many credits they come to BYU with, so the best way to determine your year in school is not by credits, but by how many years you've actually been studying at BYU (Thank heavens, because otherwise I would have been a senior for the past 3 years, instead of just the past 1 year, and that would be a little depressing considering I still don't graduate until April). So my point here is, don't make any decisions based off trying to graduate in just two more years, because while that might be possible, it's not necessarily plausible.

That said, though, studying Business Information Systems could be a viable option as long as you still take all the pre-med classes you need. According to a professor I know, he had some friends who studied history before going to med school, and the fact that they didn't do the traditional pre-med route actually made them stand out more--it showed that they had a variety of skill sets, not just the traditional "doctor-y" things, and could excel in multiple settings. So if that experience is indicative of the current market, doing something in the Marriott school could be a good option for you. It will probably take you longer to graduate, but if it's important to you, go for it!

-Alta

Dear you,

Fun fact number 1: How well you do at BYU based just on high school data is most impacted by your high school GPA, not the number of AP credits you have (trust me--I have access to all the BYU admissions and Learning Suite data and have checked this (fun side note on this fun fact: you are included in this data set under the label "Beginning Freshman")). 

Fun fact number 2: Earlier today I worked with another person to write a program that essentially gives a viability measure of different BYU class schedules (we came up with a unique algorithm using networks that I'm really happy about). Right now it just gives a general difficulty measure based on historical data, but we're probably going to improve it to take into account an individual's history as well. Basically, I actually do have the power to build a model to specifically checks if you would be successful with this path. But I'm not going to because I don't think it would be ethical to use a data set I have special permission to work with for my job outside of that job. But BYU is probably going to add the program I'm developing as a feature for students signing up for classes in the near-ish future, so stick around and you'll get that mathematically computed viability measure.

Now I'll give you my two cents worth of advice. Just because you might be able to get into your program right now doesn't mean you have to or even should. Considering you're a brand new sophomore (credits don't actually matter when determining what year you are), you have plenty of time left at BYU to complete all the necessary medical school credits along with a major in Information Systems. I even think you could probably still graduate within four years of starting your degree. Besides, if you load up your schedule with classes for med school now, you always have the option of pulling out if things get too difficult. 

When I was just coming out my freshman year (note: I was also a credit Junior--many, many BYU students are, but that doesn't change their real year in school), I had already declared my major as Applied Mathematics. I thought it would be too hard to try and do anything outside of the bare minimum required to graduate in this major because it is possibly the most intense major on campus as is. However, now I'm regretting that I didn't decide to do a double major in economics, because I could have done so fairly easily (for a skewed definition of "easy"). The point of this story is that even hard things are more viable than perhaps we think when looking forward.

Good luck with planning what you want do to with your life!

~Anathema

Dear Brother,

If you're talking about how to minister to the people you're assigned to minster to, I was having the same problem as you. Yeah, sure, I'm assigned to minister to some people in my ward, but how what's the best way to actually so that? Is it okay to just text them? Is it weird if I plan a visit to their house once a month, or would they prefer that? Should I just drop off some baked goods every once in a while and say hi to them in church? It's exciting that ministering has so many personalizable options, but it's also a little overwhelming, and I wasn't sure how to do it well. But then last week I was hit with an epiphany--I can just ask the people I'm assigned to minister to what they want me to do! It felt a little weird texting them and saying, "Hey, how do you want to be ministered to?" but honestly their answers gave me a lot more direction in how to best connect with them. People feel loved when you make an effort to do stuff that's meaningful to them, rather than just doing whatever is easiest for you. Also, their ideas for stuff to do during "ministering" sound a lot more fun than just visiting them once a month--one of them wants to do a movie night, and the other one wants to go to the pool and get shaved ice afterward--and it will honestly probably be a lot easier to connect with them while doing fun activities than during a 30 minute visit on the last day of the month. I've also found it to be really helpful to pray by name for the people I'm assigned to minister to, that I can have charity and love for them, that they can feel that I love them, and that they can be helped with anything else going on in their lives. Generic prayers to "bless people in need," are fine, but I believe there's a lot of power in praying for people by name.

Alternatively, if you're talking about how to connect with ward members in general, not just the people you're assigned to minster to, I also have problems with that! Despite having been in my ward for a year, I still don't really feel like I've made any friends, or even have people to sit with in Relief Society. It doesn't help that I live in a basement apartment, while a lot of the other couples in my ward all live in the same handful of apartment complexes, and that my ward has tons of turnover and a huge Relief Society, but I still feel like it shouldn't be THAT difficult to make meaningful connections. Luckily for both you and me, we actually had a lesson on this in Relief Society a few weeks ago, because turns out a lot of people felt that way. One of the suggestions I liked best was to do things where you naturally interact with people in the ward--join the choir, attend the activities, clean the church building when it's your ward's turn, throw yourself wholeheartedly into your calling, take people up on the things they post on the ward Facebook page ("Can someone babysit my kids?" "Who wants to go on a hike this weekend? "Does anyone want to start a book club?" "We're getting Denny's at 10 tonight!" etc etc.). It's easier to do things where you naturally have to come in contact with people, and work on building a relationship from there, than it is to invite someone over for dinner and games out of the blue.

Sometimes in your efforts to reach out to ward members you probably won't feel totally comfortable. Meeting people and building relationships is hard! Be gentle with yourself, and don't expect yourself to suddenly be best friends with everyone, but also don't make excuses to stay in your comfort zone all the time, because otherwise you'll never grow. If it's really hard for you, though, you can totally pray to feel more comfortable in certain situations!

Good luck in your efforts to be more connected in your ward! It's awesome that you care so much about loving and serving others, and I sincerely wish you all the best.

-Alta

Dear Bro,

Alta has some fantastic suggestions. I just want to add how incredible and powerful prayer is, especially when we're praying for others. If there's people you want to minister unto but don't necessarily know or love, pray for them. I've found that, as I pray for people, my love for them increases and I am so much more willing and able to serve them. I'm not sure if God gives me more opportunities to connect, or since I'm thinking about them each day I look for those opportunities, but it's always worked. It takes very little work, but praying for others has led to more love and service in my life than almost anything else.

-guppy of doom

Dear Hyppo,

Office buildings wouldn't be so dang cold during the summer.

-Spectre

Dear Thetical,

For the most part humans would probably only live where cold blooded animals currently live. I wasn't able to find any maps of cold blooded animal habitats, but I think it's safe to say that Wisconsin would be uninhabitable for most of the year.

Peace,

Tipperary

Hypotheticals,

Someone asked this on Quora and got some really dope answers. Kevin McLauchlan's answer there is exactly my cup of tea. mmm tea. I want some right now. Favorite ideas from Kevin:

• we couldn't keep our erect posture. There's just not enough surface area exposed to the sun. 
• we would be lazy lazy lazy. We would mostly wait for food to come to us. We wouldn't travel much, have settled cold places, or do really anything at night or in the winter. Think less motion in every way. Smaller range, smaller world. 
• less hormone driven behavior.

That last idea is interesting to me because the blood flow obviously facilitates hormone delivery. But I never made the connection to hormone activity and mobility. Its interesting to me to think of hormones as necessary to motivate movement across the landscape. Cool stuff.

Babalugats

Dear you,

Stand on the green grass because there was a fire drill.

~Anathema

Dear MNH,

Oh what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green?
Oh what do you do when the skies are blue, and the lakes reflect its gleam?
When the morning's pink has left the air, when the pillowing clouds turn white
Oh, what do you do when the sun's anew and is streaming golden light?
When the creeks all gurgle and songbirds sing, when the grass waves in the breeze
When the sunlight falls in bright green rays as it filters through the leaves
When children's laughter echoes and their joy colors the scene
Oh, what do you do when the children sing and when they all run free?
When the evening's air is heavy and the sun begins to dim
When fireflies alight the world as they flicker out and in
Oh, what will you do in the summertime? Oh, what will you see?
Just wander down into the pond, you'll find minnow and me.

-guppy of doom

Dear Majestically Noble Human,

Hi Board. I'm Alta.

-Alta

Dear Board,

From one all-knowing entity to another, I salute you.

-g.o.d.