Look at this poor guy

I found this picture today.

Look at the guy in the middle who is clearly in love with the girl next to him. He is just pining away and she just won't give him the time of day. Just look at her face, obviously she is thinking "seriously". But really you can't blame the guy, its a bookkeeping class. So naturally the better option is to stare at the girl he is madly in love with.

This is probably the conversation that they had:

"Oh Justine, I just love you dearly! Don't you want to work on our bookkeeping assignment together? It will help to pass the time until I can devote all of my undying attention and love to you."

"No, Earl. Leave me alone"

"But Justine we're meant for each other!"

No response.

And the guy (Theodore) two seats to the right of Justine is totally pretending to lean forward and be all studious, but really he is eavesdropping and trying to get the dirt on what's going on between Justine and Earl. Because his friend Bertram, who is sitting in the way back by the window, is also madly in love with Justine. But Bertram was late to school that day and some jerk took his spot next to the lovely Justine, so now Theodore is doing his dirty work for him.

And Justine just sits there and looks annoyed to the camera because really she is in love with the blonde in the very front left hand corner, Alfred. But he actually is focusing on his bookkeeping and is oblivious to the plight of beautiful Justine caught between unwanted lovers and pining for another.

Anne Girl

I'm watching Anne of Green Gables right now. I love Anne of Green Gables, its probably one of my favorite stories of all times. Anne is just so fun and lovable, and says so many great things you just can't help but love her.

Like tragical. That's one of my favorite words that she uses.

I also love how adamant she is about the spelling of her name. I guess I can commiserate with her because my middle name is Anne spelled with an "e" and people always ask which way I spell it. It seems like everyone else who's middle name is Anne spells it without the e. And according to Anne spelling it with an e is "so much more distinguished" and personally I think it looks more complete with the e.

The whole part with Anne and Gilbert is so funny too. Anne is so mad at him for when he called her Carrots. I love how every time Anne makes eye contact with Gilbert she sticks her nose in the air and turns around, and the whole time you can just tell that Gilbert is madly in love with Anne. Really I don't know how Anne denies Gilbert - he is so attractive...

Also Prince Edward Island is so pretty. I love the lighthouses on the coast and the open fields that Anne and Diana run through. Wouldn't it be so cool to live there?

But one of my absolute favorite parts is at the beginning with Anne's window friend Katie. Mostly because the friends name is Katie and her name is Anne, which is my name, Katie Anne. Plus Katie lives in a perfectly beautiful window world that Anne wishes she could visit.

The idea of kindred spirits and bosom friends is another of my favorite parts. I have definitely had kindred spirits and bosom friends in my life. They're the ones that make the biggest impression in your life and the ones that you remember always.

The original testing center

Today I was working on linking photographs from the BYU 100th anniversary photography collection to their archive finding aids. Which basically means that in the archives we create this database of files you can search through when you're looking for something in the archives and it will tell you what the collection is about and where you can find it. So today I was finding the digital copies of the photographs and adding them so they'd be easier to find, and I came across this...

It's the original Testing Center!

This was taken circa 1890 in the old Brigham Young Academy building. (Now the Academy building is the Provo City Library and one of my most favorite places in all of Provo. It is seriously one of the coolest libraries ever, on the inside and the outside.)

The room the students are sitting in was called "Room D" and it could be changed around for different purposes, but it was often used as a study room, as shown in the photo.

When I saw this picture, the first thing it made me think of was the Testing Center-that wonderful building full of dreadful tests, runny noses, and broken dreams. Apparently, the idea for the Testing Center has been around for a while. And if you look closely at the picture you can see the despair in the student's faces, proving that students and the Testing Center have had a rocky relationship since 1890!

Now this isn't the actual Testing Center, since the Heber J. Grant Building, home of the Testing Center today, wasn't built until 1925. Did you know that originally the Heber J. Grant Building was the library? Isn't it funny that this picture, that looks like the Testing Center, was taken in the current Provo City Library and that the current Testing Center use to be the library? Talk about coincidences.

I also found this photograph of the staircase south of campus from when it was first constructed in 1924.

The hill looks so small, I swear it's bigger in real life! Tomorrow I'm going to count the stairs and compare it to the picture to make sure they haven't been adding a stair a year or something sneaky and devious like that.

This is one thing that I love about history. Finding historic evidence of things that still exist and seeing what it looked like at different points in history. Like take this example of Provo Center Street...

circa 1860

circa 1890

1900

Today...obviously

Isn't that just so cool?! I love how downtown Provo still has historic charm. Its obvious that its not all the same buildings, though I think further down the street some of them might be the original buildings, but it has the same feeling of a historic town center that it did in 1860. And it looks pretty darn awesome in the snow.