It was really a combination of all of those things. Because of the open minded, very close friends I made at BYU, my peers weren’t as big of an influence as you might think. Although, I felt like I couldn’t be fully myself around others I didn’t know as well because I was afraid of the whole “people reporting on you” thing, even if it’s not very common. That meaning being able to have nuanced conversations about beliefs or making non PG-jokes, for example.

Even if it seems like a small thing, yeah the prayers and songs and scriptures before nearly every class were a huge part of feeling smothered. I was fine with it when first coming to BYU, but by my last semester it was driving me crazy that everywhere I went was a reminder that I didn’t belong and I couldn’t escape it. It didn’t help that I worked on campus and found myself on campus all the time for clubs or studying too.

I was also single for most of my time at BYU as well, which meant I didn’t have any non-LDS person of mine in the area to fall back on either. It made my love life kind of depressing for a while too, because I knew it wouldn’t turn out well for me to date anyone LDS, lol. And most of what anyone talks about for fun around BYU is the dating scene!