The Mormon You Know

Last Sunday night at 5 p.m., I found myself in a place I never expected to be. Not unlike my usual routine, I was at a dining hall table surrounded by my fellow Yalies. It was, nonetheless, a night full of personal firsts. It was my first time in the Timothy Dwight College dining hall, my first time meeting each of the other students who sat around my table, my first time learning about a religion about which I was utterly uneducated. In the private, reserved room upstairs of the Timothy Dwight dining hall, my stark otherness — namely, that I was fundamentally not a part of this group, this family, to which they all belonged — was washed away by smiles and openness, questions and answers.