Meet Ashley Falcon (’12)

Posted by Sarah E. Crane (BA ’09), Editorial Intern

Hometown and High School: Kent, Washington; Kentridge High School

Applied to: BYU

Major Plans: Elementary education

Interests and Achievements: Ballroom dance; part of a multicultural dance club that performed for schools in the school district; volunteered as a teacher in a preschool and interned in a first-grade class; part Native American (Chippewa).

Plans to Bring to Provo: Her Spider-Man blanket and a set of miniature plastic dinosaurs

Waking Up to Religion: Religion wasn’t a major part of Ashley Falcon’s growing-up years; her parents had both stopped attending church when she was young. But as a teenager, Ashley found a group of friends at girls’ camp who were determined to make it a bigger part of her life.

“They bugged me every day to go to seminary at 6 in the morning,” she says. “I thought they were crazy.” Finally, they made a deal: “If I went to seminary for two days, they would leave me alone.” The next morning Ashley woke up, bleary eyed at 5 a.m., to sit in her stake’s seminary class on the stage in the gym. “I thought it was odd, but I liked it,” she says. “I went every day [after] then until I graduated.” Three months after she began attending seminary, Ashley met with the missionaries. Two months later, at age 15, she was baptized.

Don’t Sweat It: When her parents talked to neighbors and friends about where Ashley would end up in college, they joked she’d go to BYU—to get married, of course. “But then I said, ‘Actually, I think I want to go there,’” she says.

Unlike some high schoolers who fret and worry about applying to college, Ashley approached her application to BYU the same way she approaches everything—with her signature easygoing style. In fact, BYU was the only university she applied to. “Now that I think about it, that was probably not the best idea, but I was very calm about it,” she says. “It didn’t really start hitting me that that was a bad decision until the week [applications were due].” But true to character, Ashley didn’t worry much about not getting accepted anywhere. “I just kind of let it go,” she says. “I felt like this is where I needed to be—like this was it.” And, as it turned out, it was.