I might be biased, but I think that COM students are some of the most creatively inclined individuals on the BU campus. Of course, we want to make sure that our inspiration doesn’t fizzle out by the time we return to Commonwealth Avenue. Recently, I’ve been thinking about how fed up I’m feeling creatively, and I knew that I couldn’t possibly be alone. So, I decided to make a list of some ways to exercise your right brain and still social distance in the process.
- Make super niche Spotify playlists
Most of us have seen the Instagram accounts that create the “niche” posts with extremely detailed layouts of objects and outfits that align with a certain personality, book, movie, etc. Well, what if you did the same with your favorite songs? It can be anything – from “Uncut Gems Alternate Soundtrack” to “What the COM Lounge Would Listen to If It Were a Person.” This is a great way to find new music, curate a cohesive product, and be as weirdly specific as your internal monologue wants you to be. Don’t forget you can make the playlists collaborative, too!
- Create a smash book
If you’re anything like me, you miss your display of posters, pictures, lights, and random little tchotchkes in your dorm room or apartment. One of the best – and portable! – ways to bring this home to your quarantine space is to make a smash book. Find an old, hardcover book, and decorate the pages however you choose. Pages can be painted, made into origami, ripped apart, used as a collage background, the choices are endless. If you fill out a page a day, you can have the coolest quarantine journal in history.
- Make a short “film”
Is anyone else super confused about how we ended up in this timeline? Yeah, me too. While it might feel like we don’t get up to anything these days for the sake of flattening the curve, directing your own little movie might prove you wrong. Maybe you want to give an MTV Cribs-esque tour of your house. Maybe you’ve been working on a new character in your head. Maybe you just want to document the weirdest possible weeks you’ve experienced so you can look back on them later. Anything goes – maybe you’ll discover you were meant for film and TV all along.
In any case, these are weird times. It’s going to be difficult not to go a bit stir-crazy for the time being. When it feels like everyone is losing their cool, keeping your own can be as easy as finding a few minutes every day to have a creative outlet and make yourself laugh. As long as you keep those good vibes flowing, quarantine can only get more fun from here. Until we’re all back in the fall, keep COM and carry on.