GRADUATION!

Well, It's official...I am a BYU graduate!

On April 21st and 22nd my family came to Utah to celebrate!
My sister returned from serving an 18-month mission in Salt Lake City,
And I graduated from BYU with a degree in Communications: Public Relations.
It was an exciting week for the Taylor Family!



My cute family after Thursday's ceremony and Hannah & I with our cute cookies for the Melendez family.
Books of Mormon for the Hermana and Y's for the graduate!

My wonderful grandparents traveled to Provo for the festivities as well.

I was so glad they could make it and am grateful for their love and support!

These people right here are some of the greatest I have ever met.
I became friends with Lauren & Chad when we were all in New York last summer interning
and we have been inseparable ever since.
We're not actually called the three musketeers or three amigos (although we should be)...
But we are three something amazing!
And Jeff Dubois was a fabulous professor and leader, and a great example to me.
He was the one who went to NYC and pitched me to Goodman Media International where I interned last Spring.

My Comms boys.
Scott and I survived in Intro to PR together years ago
and Chad dared to leave the cool/advertising side of our lab to hang out with us on the PR side.
If that's not true friendship, I don't know what is.

And my PR family.
What would I do without these guys?
We made it through tons of classes, projects, meetings, campaign presentations and late nights and I know the only reason I made it through was because of them.
We spent many hours together in our beloved Brimhall Building and second home.
Lauren Lytle was my partner in crime in New York and the Bradley Agency.
Erika was the glue that held our 336 group together and kept me sane on our trip to Dallas when everything went wrong.
Logan was our "wordsmith" and made us do leaps in the hallways when things got too stressful.
Lauren Johnson literally saved my life during our capstone class and was the only reason it all came together in the end.
This is no ordinary bunch.
I am so excited to see what is in store for all of these amazingly talented people.
Because I know for a fact that it is something good.

I am so blessed to have such an amazingly supportive family and group of friends. I wouldn't be a BYU grad without them!

My last week in Provo

This last week was a crazy one! Sad because there were a lot of goodbyes but also pretty awesome because I got to spend time with some of my very favorite people. It's strange to think that in a few days I won't be living in Provo anymore....so let's just not think about that right now and get on to a few of the million things I did and fabulous people I saw my last week in Provo.

Miss Courtney is getting married soon so we got to celebrate! Cindi surprised her and drove up for the shower. I just love these girls!

Reunion dinner with Kate & Amber. It was so much fun to catch up with these two!

One last stop to J-Dawgs with two of my favorite boys! They called and asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with them...cute, right? So i took a break before my last final and met up with them.


Lauren threw a fabulous graduation party at Spark for our PR friends


People make fun of us all the time for going to Old Spaghetti Factory but for some reason it has just been "our thing". So naturally Lauren, Chad and I had our farewell dinner there.

And last but certainly not least, a bunch of our family got to go to Salt Lake Wednesday night to pick up Hermana Taylor from the Utah, Salt Lake mission. We got to go to the testimony meeting and hear all of the missionaries speak before going home that night. It was so amazing and we are so excited to have her back!!

And of course I graduated but I think that deserves a post of it's own...

Big news!

first of all, i just took my very last final ever at byu. big moment! so big in fact that i was too busy celebrating and completely forgot to check my score. oh well, i'm done and that's all that matters.

now on to more important news....

my baby sister gets home from her mission TOMORROW!!! i honestly do not know how this is happening because i feel like it was last week that we dropped her off at the mtc. i remember everything about that day like it just happened. it was the same day that i turned in my nyc internship application and then i waited what seemed like forever to find out if i got in, then it seemed like forever again until i actually went to nyc, then i lived and worked there AND came back for another year of school. what?? how did 18 months pass by without me even knowing? it's crazy, i tell you!

but i am glad it went by quickly because tomorrow i get to see one of my best friends in the whole wide world! she has been such an amazing example to me over the last year and a half and i can't wait to be able to to back to calling her five times a day again. man, i have missed this girl!

And so it begins

And so it begins.....the end of my time here at BYU. Today was my last day of class, which I wasn't too sad about. But tonight, we had our PRSSA closing social and it was so much fun to see everyone but it was the beginning of all the goodbyes that are going to happen over the next week. Being a member of PRSSA [Public Relations Student Society of America] has been so much fun this year and I have met so many great friends through our activities and events. I am going to miss them all so much! It was fun to get together and have one last little party before we all go our separate ways.

[Lauren, my NYC partner in crime and our lovely PRSSA president and Erika, who kept me sane through the entire program. Seriously.]

[I love these girls!!]

[Dr. Plowman, DKP, K-Plow, basically our very favorite professor. I think I took every class he taught.]

[Michelle, Nick & Michelle. Oh how I will miss these people!]


[Our table & all the seniors getting our pens. My awkward pose is due to the fact that I was forced to half sit on a table.]


[Aww and everyone. I know, I know. This post is a little picture heavy but I couldn't choose just a few.]

A Fair Warning

let me help you out.
if you see or talk to me in the next two [actually, lets say three....just to be safe] weeks, you should know a few things first.
yes, i am graduating in april
no, i do not know what i am doing after.
i would advise you to avoid the following topics:
graduation
future work plans
where i want to live
if i am excited
if i am nervous
if i am scared
where my other friends are going, etc.
and even then i cannot guarantee i won't cry at some point during our conversation.
consider yourself warned.

[just a few of the many people i will be missing]

to answer a few simple questions without having to have an actual conversation: i am graduating april 21st, i am going home for a few weeks to hang out with hannah [hooray!], i don't know what i am doing after, and i am mostly sad about having to leave all of my amazing family and friends. i know that even though this is all stressful, everything will work out in the end and i really have nothing to worry about. whatever is meant to be will be.

My "Bon Jovi Backstage Experience"

About a week ago I got to do something pretty cool thanks to one of my professors and the director of the Bradley Agency, our student run PR firm. A recent BYU grad contacted him about an opportunity to send three PR students to do a "mini-internship" with Bon Jovi which was called the "Bon Jovi Backstage Experience".

We spent almost twelve hours watching them turn the pieces of equipment from 19 big rigs into the most amazing high-tech stage I have ever seen [not that i've seen many]. We got to talk to a bunch of the guys who help make the tour happen and it was a lot of fun. There was a guy who was Prince's guitar guy for twenty years, a man who promoted tours for Michael Jackson as well as two other Bon Jovi tours, tons that worked on Britney Spears' last tour and lots of other cool people. It was incredible to see how much time and energy and behind-the-scenes stuff goes into a production like this.

We also got a little PR practice in as we were interviewed for various local newspapers and news stories. Apparently I was on the news but I never got to see it. I was quoted in a few articles but I am pretty sure the quote was altered a little. Oh well. It was still great practice. At the end of the day we enjoyed the show from the pit for a few songs and then back in our seats in the second row for the rest of the night. Not too shabby, right? And in case you were wondering, Bon Jovi was great. It was the most seamless, smooth-running show I have ever been to!

To say it was amazing would be an understatement. I had two friends there with professional cameras who took awesome pictures but I figured if I waited to get them from everyone it would just take too long. So I will share a few of the less amazing but still pretty cool pictures I took.

[we left for lunch and came back to the whole venue set up and ready to go]


[their amazing collection of guitars. can you believe they let us near them?]


[quite possibly my favorite moment]


[on stage with all their equipment]

Gaga, Ooh La La

[putting our paws up]

Last week Chad and I saw Lady Gaga and it was kind of a big deal.
First of all, we heard about it in August and wanted to buy tickets right away but we thought we should wait it out.
"Waiting it out" for us meant we waited until October...for a concert in March.
Needless to say we were a little anxious for this day to come.
And we were really afraid that we wouldn't be friends by the time the show came around.
So the night was a celebration of waiting patiently for 7 months
and toughing it out and remaining friends for the 5 months we had tickets.
We made it!

[Gaga performing, me & the stage, my toes in a puddle of beer]

Due to the facts that we had never seen Gaga perform before and we weren't sure we'd even be going to the show so far in the future,
we bought the cheapest tickets we could.
We were up high but you could see everything perfectly and even backstage.
It was pretty amazing.
Except for that one part where someone above us threw a beer and it hit me
And that other part when the woman right above me kicked her brand new beer and it landed right on me.
The whole thing.
She did bring me a napkin though, which was nice but didn't help with the smell.
Or the wetness.

[I spent a long time convincing chad the lightning bolt wasn't embarrassing & even though I don't think he believed me he still did it. the glasses, however, took no convincing.]

We had some time on our hands between the opening act and when Mother Monster arrived to take us to the Monster Ball.
Clearly that lead to a little monster photo shoot to show off our lightning bolts and glasses.

For those of you non-gaga fans out there, here is some vocab for you:
Mother Monster: Lady Gaga
Monster Ball: Her concert
Little Monsters: Us/her fans
No, I did not make that up.

[the actual monster, mother monster, and a little monster trying on our glasses before the show]

It definitely was not a show for everyone
[the mom next to us sat with her hands clasped and mouth straight the whole two hours]
but we loved it so much!
And she ended with "Bad Romance"
my all time favorite
It was perfect.