If I could go back and redo my undergrad, this is how it would go...

As the title says...

• I would have taken more AP tests in HS, so that I would have had as many generals out of the way as possible. In reality I was depressed for most of HS and only took a few AP tests because that was what everyone else was doing. Like I didn’t even know what an AP test was when I first signed up for APUSH; I was just told that I wasn’t challenging myself enough in regular history lol (and I am very grateful to Mr. Tackett for pushing me).  
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• With what remaining generals I had, I would’ve taken them from the easiest professors possible so I could focus on my major. Having decided my major early I would’ve also avoided a good degree of redundancy (note to prospective BYU students: do not take BIO 100, take PWS 150 because it double counts and is one of the easiest and most fun classes at the university. BIO 100 is pain and if you’re a biology major or minor you are supposed to take 130 anyway. And if you are a CS major, DON’T FREAKING TAKE CHEM 105 unless you’re doing bioinformatics! Ok rant over). 
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• Declare Pre-CS Animation immediately, instead of waiting until post-mission. I would never have even considered the idea of double majoring with English; it would’ve just always been a minor.
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• Immediately declare minors in art (or design ideally which is more focused on drawing and animating, though the minor got removed for some stupid reason), IT, math (or engineering if BYU actually had that), and creative writing. If I declared them early (and skirted a bunch of pointless and lame GEs somehow) I probably would’ve been able to fit that all in. I know people who did 4 minors; it is very possible even at a stricter hurry-up-and-leave place like the Y. But, because I did not come up with this combination until later in my college career, they didn’t let me add design or IT. At least I got creative writing and math. But seriously, if places like MIT and Cornell have minors in various fields of engineering and robotics, BYU should have that, too (and it would’ve been a better minor than math, as much as I enjoyed math). Instead they don’t and they force the CS majors into CPMS and the Talmage building, which smells like microwaveable cardboard pasta, body odor, and broken dreams. If IT, manufacturing, and industrial design are in the engineering college, then CSANM should be too, dang it. If the advisors had put up resistance to this plan, I would’ve simply pushed the professors in each minor to let me take their classes anyway, then declared the minors when I was like 1 class away from finishing. The goal should be to avoid talking with your academic advisor as much as possible, as they will always mess with what you’re trying to do.
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• Applied for Brandon Sanderson’s class every single year, even as a freshman (freshman year I low-key didn’t even know that a speculative fiction class existed).
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• Take university band every winter.
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• Apply for CS Animation before my mission so I wouldn’t have had to worry about it the whole 2 years.
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• Do the Disney college program, which I never ended up doing, the summer before my mission, then go on my mission. Also get my CompTIA certs before starting (since BYU gets out early). I know developers don’t NEED those, but I WANT them lol.
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• After my mission, get an internship in software development one semester, then animation, then theme park design. If I had another summer I’d have gone for FAANG or Big-N as well. The only thing I ever ended up actually doing was the first one, at Sling.
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• Take scripting for animation, intermediate 3D graphics, and visual effects.
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• Actually get a 4.0 GPA, or at least 3.7 ffs, and probably not worried about taking any Spanish classes as sadly I am not even close to being fluent right now lol.

But then again, I suppose that our favorite lion Simba once said “the only thing we know is things don’t always go the way we plan, but you’ll see every day that we’ll never turn away”.

Life is messy and the important thing is that we keep iterating. Honestly, without the experiences I’ve had up to this point, I probably never would have come to these realizations. Plus if I had gotten into Brandon’s class earlier, I wouldn’t have met my current awesome writing group.

The Lord is in control.