BYU's Campus Education Week in full bloom

PROVO — James Briggs was 18 and on top of the world last year as he got ready to drive to the Thursday night dance that is a main attraction for the LDS teenagers who attend Brigham Young University's annual Campus Education Week.

Briggs was part of a large group of teens from around the country who had become close friends in the space of a few short days at Education Week, and he couldn't wait to hang out with the guys and dance with the girls.

Then his car broke down. He never made it to the party.

"I had a line of girls waiting to dance with me," he said with a good-natured moan earlier this week. He promised to make it to this year's dance with a lot of those old friends and some new ones, but Briggs clearly had a new focus as he mapped out the classes he'd attend this week.

"I'm looking for great instruction on missionary work," said Briggs, who next month begins a two-year mission to Guatemala for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

That wide variety of available experiences draws more than 20,000 Latter-day Saints to BYU each August. It's the reason the Allison family of Peyton, Colo., has made the pilgrimage for 18 straight years.

At first, Jim and Audrey Allison said, they came to learn more about raising young children. Then they enjoyed bringing their five children as part of a growing family tradition. Now that the children are older, they spent several hours Monday at a series of classes titled "To the Parents and Grandparents of College-Age Young Single Adults." The presenter, Blair Van Dyke of the Orem Institute of Religion at Utah Valley University, promised help countering the epidemic of entitlement he's observed taking hold among teens and twenty-somethings.

"It's wonderful that we can still find things applicable to our family as our family grows," Audrey Allison said. "We enjoy the good influences and good instruction. It's also a rejuvenation for me. It gives me fresh ideas and a burst of energy for another year."

This year's Education Week was extra special for Kathy Bellows of Dubuque, Iowa, and not just because it was her first. The chance presented itself when she learned her daughter Candace, who will be a sophomore at BYU this fall, needed to return to Provo early to train for a campus job. Her husband, Kevin, volunteered to stay home and care for the couple's other four children.

"He'll run them to football camp, flute practice, band camp, Scouts," she said. "It's awesome. I feel very loved."

Bellows could only stay for Tuesday's classes, so she used the online class schedule at home to map out her day.