Game for Change

http://philome.la/epdickerson/byu-married-life

I feel strongly about this because we, as a part of the small percentage of US college students who have married under the national average age, are objects of curiosity and almost derision:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/07/tying-knot-on-campus-at-brigham-young-university-one-fourth-students-are.html

http://college.usatoday.com/2015/02/27/many-college-couples-are-receiving-a-marriage-certificate-before-a-diploma/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/15/college-marriage-facebook/2989039/

The funny part to me is that BYU is the focus of two of these articles, and in the third a reader commented at their surprise that BYU wasn't mentioned. We're obviously a top school when it comes to marriages, and yet we have very few of the accommodations other schools provide for married students (click here for evidence--warning: strong language). My game works against the negative mindset against young marriage as demonstrated in these articles. I tried to write it as honestly in my own voice as I could, to recreate the engagement I feel with the situation. I hope it draws attention to the sides of married life we don't tell single students about as we push them towards marriage: financial difficulty, time management, bad housing, and social exclusion. I mention this on the "debate" page of my game, but that last factor was the biggest surprise for me. When I got married, I expected some sort of induction into the social circle of married people, which I understood from BYU culture to be a much better social circle than that of singles. But the married circle doesn't exist. It's just me and my husband in our own little circle. The act of being alienated from my single friends, especially as my husband is so often at work, has actually been a negative impact on my life. If I could correct one social misunderstanding, it's that singles believe their married friends don't need them or want to spend time with them anymore. That's just not true. I hope my game demonstrates that.