Starting at BU in the fall, I was eager to find community and familiarity in a place that was so unfamiliar. For me, that familiarity was volleyball. BU offers both club and intramural levels of most sports, which makes it easy to get involved at any level of skill, or commitment. My intramural team, the ‘volleybarbz’ played in a mixed league, and had games usually once or twice a week in the evenings. The environment of intramurals is so fun because the stakes are low and the spirits are high. The team provided me with a space to relax, take a break from the stress of schoolwork, be active, and have fun playing a sport I love. I strongly encourage everyone to get involved in the endless extracurricular opportunities that BU has to offer, and if you’re interested in volleyball, the volleybarbz are always looking for players ;).
Another highlight of my first semester was my freshman writing seminar. Every class has a topic that focuses the class, and there are so many to choose from so that you can customize the experience to your interests. My class focused on harmful environmental practices and extractive economies. The class is seminar style, usually between ten and fifteen students, fostering the perfect environment to make friends and participate in discussions. My favorite assignment of my first semester was the class’s final project, a creative writing assignment. The course was mostly filled with long form, analytical essays, but for our final assignment our professor had us write creative short stories that were somehow related to the topic of environmental degradation or extractivism. The opportunity to let loose and be as creative as I wanted was so incredible, and I ended up writing a story in the gothic style, very much inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, about the guilt of consumerism. The assignment gave me a reason to exercise my creativity and very much reinvigorated my love for creative writing.
To lightly touch upon some other high points, I joined the architecture club, my friends and I are active attendees of student acapella, sketch comedy and theater performances, and I found out that I love economics, and find it extremely interesting.
As far as what I’m most looking forward to, it’s hard to narrow down, but I’ll do my best. Some friends and I just signed on an apartment for next year, so I can’t wait to see what living more independently is like. I am excited to continue pursuing my Environmental Analysis and Policy minor, because I have loved the classes for it so far, and I am excited to take more Public Relations classes, because I have enjoyed all the hands-on style learning that my COM classes utilize. For example, in my introductory PR class, we learned how to make a PR plan by creating an in-depth PR plan for a business of our choice, including research, action planning, and mock pitching.
Overall, my first six months here have been some of the most fun and enriching of my life, and I can’t wait to see what the future brings.
