As told by Isaac Smith
UVU completely changed the course of what I wanted to do with my life. It really opened up all the opportunities for where I'm at right now.
Photo by August Miller
When I’m doing backcountry skiing, it is so gratifying to feel like I’ve worked for this experience. You have to hike up, you have skins on the bottom of your skis that help you keep your skis on to track up the mountain, and it’s not easy. Your skis are heavy. You’re trudging through deep snow. So you put a lot of work in to do it. But then you finally make that transition, take your skins off, get ready to ski, and it’s so gratifying to feel like, “I put the work in to get the reward out of this.” It’s a beautiful feeling.
It’s a way to leave your mark on the mountain. But it’s also humbling because that mark goes away. You can turn around and see the line you skied, and you painted your picture on the mountain. But then in a week, when it snows again, that picture is gone, and nobody’s going to see it. So that’s my relationship with the mountain, what I left on the mountain, and then I’m the only one who gets to remember that. It’s not just like, “Oh, I love skiing!” There’s a lot of deep relationship with the outdoors with it — sharing that passion with the mountain.
Growing up, I did compete [in skiing] in high school and got a little bit more into it in college. I did some big mountain competition stuff. But then you start to get older, and everybody younger than you is way better than you, so you decide to stop making yourself feel bad by going to compete.
I had a couple of friends that encouraged me to think about school a little bit more, and I was looking at going to one school and decided not to go there. And on a total whim, I felt like I needed to commit to whether I was going to go to UVU. A couple of buddies were going there, and I was like, “All right, cool, my friends are there. I’m going to go there!” It was not the most thought-through decision that I ever made, but probably, apart from getting married, it’s one of the most life-altering decisions that I ever made.
When I first went to UVU, the buddy that I kind of followed to UVU was an ambassador. He’s like, “Hey, they’re still accepting applications.” And I was involved in high school student government stuff, so I was like, “Yeah, that’d be a really cool opportunity.” And so I applied for that, and I got in.
That kind of started to cascade to other opportunities as I got into the Center for the Advancement of Leadership program. That led to getting involved in UVUSA and being a VP in UVUSA. There’s so much opportunity to get involved at UVU and to be able to just be around so many passionate, excited people that were similar to me. That just continued to encourage me to pursue what I wanted to do.
I had passion for skiing, passion for creating. I bounced around a few different majors quite a bit, trying to figure out, “What do I really want to do? What can I see myself doing for the rest of my life?” I was talking to my advisor at the time, and she brought up this idea of going down the university studies side of things and curating my own degree to be in product design. So that was an opportunity that came through being involved on campus.
It gave me a chance to mesh two of these passions that I love — the outdoors and design and creating things. I could keep pursuing this passion as a skier, keep being involved in the outdoor industry, and maybe split my time with skiing for some of these brands, but also designing products that help other people get into the outdoors.
I finished my degree at UVU in university studies and design. My senior project was designing this climbing pack. It was a blast — I loved it! I was like, “There’s no way that this could be a real job, just designing cool outdoor gear.”
Later, I found this really cool program in product design and management at the University of Oregon. As I was applying, I was kind of nervous, thinking, “Oh, I don’t know if I’m qualified to do this.” The senior project I did at UVU was the perfect project piece to use to apply to grad school. So again, it was something that came from UVU that just allowed me to continue pursuing my dreams and what I wanted to do. So I was able to use that project to kind of show what my background and my skills were in product creation.
UVU completely changed the course of what I wanted to do with my life. It opened up so many new and unique opportunities that I don't genuinely know — and I'm not just saying this — I don't think I would have had those opportunities at any other place or any other school, so many opportunities to push myself and to explore my passions more and to try new things.
It really opened up all the opportunities for where I'm at right now — to have the opportunity to go to grad school, ski for more brands, and pursue my dreams as an athlete a little bit more, and create products that allow people to enjoy their time outdoors. Looking back, it's kind of surreal because it blows my mind at how I have this tiny decision where somebody was willing to talk to me, somebody at UVU was willing to give me advice that I didn't know I needed. That helped completely change the track of my life and made me extremely happy with where I'm at now.
Someone in my freshman year at UVU said this, and I don’t know if it was something that he lived by, but it has stuck with me ever since: “If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right.” There are different types of fun. It’s not like you’re always just stoked about something. There are all sorts of ways that you can enjoy doing something. As long as you’re enjoying the process in your life, that’s what counts. Step back and remember, “Am I having fun and doing something that I care about?” And if you are, then you’re probably on the right track.
Links:
University Studies program
Utah Valley University Student Association (UVUSA)
UVU Ambassadors
Preston Case on Instagram
Teton Sports
University of Oregon Graduate Program in Product Design
