COM Ambassador Blog

With the weather growing warmer places like the COM Lawn and the BU Beach start to become crowded as we all crawl out of our hibernations from this terrific and terrible winter. For me, warmer weather means the transition to iced coffee and more importantly, iced cream. As an East Campus resident, one of my favorite ways to spend a Saturday is wandering down the uneven sidewalks of Newbury Street. While it may be known for its clothing boutiques, the coffee and ice cream scene at Newbury leaves nothing to be desired.

A short walk down the street, one can find the relatively new Barrington Coffee Roasting Company. They opened in December, and I am disappointed to say I just discovered their little coffee haven. With huge windows and tables outside (both with great wifi), it’s a wonderful place to spend an afternoon working on these final assignments. Their iced coffee is absolutely killer. They offer a super cool variety of coffees, including their “Steampunk” varieties, which they will gladly explain to you as they did to me. The Thinking Cup is a longer walk, but if you’re looking for sweets to accompany your coffee they have incredible macaroons that are totally worth the trip. They make their iced coffee with cold brew, and it goes great with whatever sweet you choose for the afternoon.

Continuing down Newbury, one can find Boston staple Emack & Bolio’s Ice Cream. Known for their fun flavors (which are all also incredibly instagram-able), it’s a great way to spend an afternoon, or to take a break from studying for exams. Personal favorites include Espresso and Chocolate Addiction, but there’s a fun flavor for everyone. For those who are looking for something a little fancier, Amorino Gelato has high-class flavors, many with names I would never even try to pronounce – like Cioccolato Ecuador Pure Origine. It’s a bit more of a splurge, but during the study period and finals week it might be worth it!

Separate than just study locations and study break options, Newbury is just generally a great place to spend these warm days. And with the semester winding down, these little excursions are a great way to spend some time with those people you might not get to see for the whole summer.

There is something that separates COM students from students at other schools, they are involved, and they are busy. While the former is a fantastic thing and is what makes BU so freaking special, it results in the second thing. It’s hard. You’ll go to SPLASH at the beginning of first semester and get wildly overwhelmed about all the amazing things you could be doing on campus (at least I did, but I also get overwhelmed about everything). At SPLASH, I signed up for everything and I still get emails from all of them. Like seriously, I need to unsubscribe to the Inner Faith Gospel Choir’s newsletter and I have no idea how. But anyway, I did end up joining a lot of those activities, and now as an almost sophomore (WHAT OMG PLEASE STOP!?!?), I think I’ve figured out a few things to help you manage your extracurricular schedule. 

Pick one or two groups that are most important to you, and arrange your schedule around them.

I have done this with Liquid Fun and BU on Broadway, making my nightly rehearsals my conflict for other things. So sometimes I can’t make it to a meeting for another group, but people usually understand because these are groups where you are working towards a product, instead of just meeting to discuss updates on what’s going on in the group. It’s important to not make every group the most important thing to your schedule. It’s great to pick a few things to put above others, but you need time to breathe.

Put it all in a planner! 

I rely on my iCal religiously to make sure I am places on time (even though I’m still never on time… whoops), and I set alerts before hand. I have different color coded calendars to make sure all things work out. It de-stresses me to look at my calendar and know things have been sorted out a bit. Pro-tip: download the app “Fantastical” it makes entering events waaaaay easier.

It’s okay not to do everything.

I had to quit a bunch of things that I had intended on doing at first, but once you get in he swing of things you realize how incredibly often things can and will conflict and you have to figure out what is going to be important. At the end of the day extracurriculars are here to make you happy and to enrich your experience at BU, and while we are fortunate enough to have such a vast extracurricular community, you don’t have to do all of it to get the full experience.

Acceptance letters were mailed out last week, and I just wanted to say congratulations to all those future Terriers! You are one step closer to an amazing college experience.

For those of you still deciding if BU is the right school for you, here are some elements that helped me choose BU. Hopefully it helps with your decision!

1. The city of Boston. So many opportunities, a great city with so much to do and a hub of diverse people I would have never met living anywhere else. With the city being a quick T ride inbound, there’s never a dull moment.

2. BU campus is the perfect balance of living in a city and living in a suburb. With East campus being so close to the city, and West campus being in a more residential area, there is a place to call home for everyone. Not to mention the walk between areas of campus is good exercise. But for those who don’t like walking – don’t worry. There is a free BU bus that rides around campus, and the Green Line and multiple city bus routes run through campus.

3. It’s so easy to find your niche. Whether you’re an athlete, an artist, an academic or a mixture of all three – it’s easy to find people you connect with. Everyone at BU is friendly and come from a variety of backgrounds. It’s easy to make friends with people from all walks of life and having diverse friend groups is a great perk of going to a university with a widely diverse community.

4. BU’s top-notch facilities: From three dining halls, over ten dorm options, a state of the art Fitness and Recreation Center and a massive library, BU’s facilities are impressive to say the least. All of the buildings are in great shape and offer a plethora of resources to all students.

5. I fell in love with BU the moment I toured COM. It’s so easy to get involved, everyone was so welcoming and I knew attending COM would push me to be the best possible form of myself. In my first month of college I joined BUTV10, WTBU, and the Daily Free Press. COM is what you make of it, and I highly suggest participating in COM to the fullest.

I hope you fall in love with BU like I did. I promise it will be the best four years of your life!

With the end of the semester quickly approaching, the onslaught of final exams, papers, and projects can be daunting and overwhelming. Additionally, if you’re involved with any student group, you’ll know that the end of the spring semester is probably the busiest time of the year for groups as well. My friends in acapella groups all have their spring performances, anyone who works with incoming students knows that admitted students are starting to arrive on campus in droves, and even comedy groups have their share of stressful times as their final performances of the semester are starting to occur.

Thus, as a COM student, a typical day for you might be a hurdle. Today, for instance, I started working in the Admissions office at 9:00 AM, then I had a 3-hour lecture, then I will be giving a tour of the COM building for admitted students before meeting with my group for a project due tomorrow (I’ll have to find time to eat somewhere). And this hectic schedule is not a rare one for most COM students.

Thus, it extremely important to remember to practice self-care. That is, in the midst of a crazy month, schedule time to do things you enjoy and take care of your emotional and mental well-being. Self-care can come in a variety of forms, ranging from going on a walk on the Esplanade, to just watching your favorite TV show on Netflix. You can organize a self-care meet-up with a group of friends and go to the movies, you can participate in the Center for Gender, Sexuality, and Activism’s weekly Self-Care Sunday sessions, or just spend time alone.

Regardless of what you decide to do, remember that you do need time for yourself. This is not to say you should procrastinate all of your final assignments, but you shouldn’t spend every moment of every day running around and working either. Listen to your favorite song and dance around in your room, watch that funny video your friend sent you but you never got around to watching, or take a trip to Pavement and get a cup of your favorite coffee. Whatever you decide to do, taking a 20-minute break to take care of yourself can actually help you much more than you’d think!

Wrapping up my fourth semester at BU is a lot to wrap my head around. So, instead of trying to think through that, here's three anecdotes from my two years here that prove why COM was the right choice for me, and why it can be for you too. 

1. September of freshman year: After joining BUTV10, I wanted to get straight to making TV. Armed with borrowed-from-BU-film-equipment, my partner, Louie, who was also freshman, and my first-ever T pass, I headed down to Copley to interview a Twitter-celeb named Tom. Turns out, that Twitter-celeb was the man behind the famous @BostonTweet account, and the event we were interviewing him at also had a guest appearance from Miss USA. Not even a month into my BU career, I went home with a signed Miss USA poster, an on-camera interview with her and @BostonTweet, and a wicked cool story. (By that point I'd picked up some new, hip Bostonian vocab too). Without BUTV10, though, I would've probably just spent the Saturday afternoon in my dorm room. 

2. April of freshman year: Second semester came crashing to an amazing end by the last week of April, and seeing as Boston is so easy to get to and fun to visit, my grandparents decided to pay me a birthday visit (my birthday's April 29th). Over a surprise dinner at The Top of the Hub, I told them all about the city I'd explored while looking down at it (if you haven't been to the top of the Prudential Center, find a way to get there. The view's incredible). I described studying at the Boston Public Library during snowstorms and wandering around the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum one random Sunday afternoon. Since it's so easy to get anywhere in Boston from BU, I was only one year in and I already felt like Boston was my city.

3. March of sophomore year: I'm home in CT for spring break. I'm exhausted from devoting tons of time to a project that one of my professors had encouraged our class to participate in -a film competition put on by New England Sports Network. I'm in constant communication with my incredibly talented teammates, also sophomores in COM, because any day now we could find out if our short film made the Top 10. The phone rings on Friday morning: we've made it. We're one step closer to the grand prize of $20,000 and a set of really cool bragging rights, and had our professor not told us that this competition existed, we never would have been in this position. Yet again, I owe a cool experience to the COM community, and yet again, I find myself so thankful that I chose BU.

Decision season is upon us, high school seniors. I've been here two years, and have made way more amazing memories than just these three in the past four semesters. They all come back to one decision though; one school. 

Forgive my cheesiness here, but: "This could Be U." 

I am a generally uptight person who likes to have control of my life. Recently I have been a bit trapped by expectations I feel other people put on me. After consulting my therapist (one of my friends) we decided I should make a list of things I want to do in order to break out of my shell. I wrote said list one night while I was struggling to fall asleep.

After a night of comedy shows (Liquid Fun and The Daily Show’s Jessica Williams) I was a bit hyper and eager to explore. My friend Bronsen suggested venturing down town. I assembled a group, who also happen to be my roommates for next year, and we set on our way.

We got outside of Warren Towers and didn’t know where to go: downtown, Cambridge, Coolidge Corner? I chose Cambridge because I hadn’t crossed the river since before I arrived at BU. We walked on a beautiful night through Kenmore square, across the bridge measured in smoots (a unit of measurement conceived by MIT students). We, particularly I, goofed off the whole way and just enjoyed each others’ company. 

We walked through MIT and found a sculpture that made me feel smarter just looking at  it (see picture). After another 20 minutes or so we arrived at Harvard. I remember saying “my IQ went up five points just looking at the brick buildings”. After walking for almost an hour, we decided to find somewhere to sit. There we talked about life, sang songs, and improvised ice skating on a still-melting patch of ice. 

After we Uber’d home to Warren, I sat down at my desk and took out my journal where I had written down my “To-Do List”. I checked off “go on an unplanned adventure”. I really enjoyed not knowing every step of the night and on a whim deciding to go straight or turn left at a light. For someone who has everything from homework assignments to television shows programmed in her calendar, I think I handled not have a plan very well. I embraced it and I have no regrets.

College is a place for self-discovery. Its important to step out of your comfort zone. I am trying to do that, and will continue checking things off my list in search of a better me. Each item represents something I am afraid of. Overcoming those fears will open myself up to new opportunities. “Try a food you’re afraid to eat” may just lead to a new favorite food. Its important to get out there and see the wonderful world around.