As we look down the road to the 25th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Core Curriculum (taking place this May 1st and 2nd… hope to see you there!), we’ve been getting in touch with Core alumni to find out how they’ve been doing in the years since they left BU. We’re gathering these updates at the Class Notes page, but will also be cross-posting many here to the Core blog.
Here is an update from alumna Grecia Alvarez — CAS 2007, a double-major in English and Spanish, and Fulbright Award-winner — now living in Cadiz, Spain:
1. Tell us about your life since graduation!
After graduating in 2007, I got a job at the office of the BU Madrid Study Abroad program, and was there for a year. I then returned to Boston to begin working toward my MA in Library and Information Science at Simmons College, which I obtained in 2010. I was able to study abroad in South Korea at Yonsei University during the summer of 2009, which was a highlight of my graduate career. During my MA program, I got a job at Children’s Hospital at the Center on Media and Child Health but was soon beckoned away by the promise of exotic adventures in Morocco, when I was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (the photo above was taken in the medina of Assilah in Morocco).
In Morocco I was stationed in Tetouan, about a one-hour drive away from Tangier and made lasting friendships at Abdelmalek Essaadi University, where I was teaching. I also met my future husband that year, in the form of a handsome French teacher… but I didn’t even know it at the time! After my Fulbright, I returned to my hometown Hialeah, in Florida, and took jobs at the local public library and at Miami Dade College. I became the Collection Development librarian and head of the Technical Services Department at the Hialeah Public Library, and at MDC I was an Information Literacy Instructor.
About a year and a half into my tour in Miami, I got engaged to that aforementioned handsome French teacher. Throwing care to the wind, I moved back to Morocco. We got married last year when we were both working in Tangier: he was at the local Spanish high school, and I worked at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies as a librarian and at the American Language Center as an English teacher.
Now we are both in the south of Spain, traipsing about and looking for our next adventure.
2. Share with us some of your BU memories.
Coming to Boston University was probably one of the greatest things to happen to me, personally and professionally, because I got a world-class education in a supportive and enriching environment.
Core started out as a way for me to get those pesky math and science requirements out of the way, but it turned into so much more, because I finally felt that I was in charge of my learning. What I enjoyed most was the constant encouragement we got from our professors to go with our gut to be carefree in exploring these texts and ideas. Everyone at the Core, students, faculty and staff, were free to be themselves — and that is something I have not been able to find in quite the same way in any community of learning ever since.
Plus, I have to say, that the Core attracts some of the best and brightest, and I am not just saying that because I was in it. I met some of the coolest people in my Core classes, including the girl who would be my roommate all throughout college.
3. Do any classroom or campus anecdotes stick out in your mind?
I will never forget the Core poetry seminar evenings with George Kalogeris, or countless hours pestering my professors at office hours, bless them.
I also remember that a classmate had the brilliant idea of printing out a replica of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, page by page, and taping it up on the ceiling of his dorm room. Only in Core.
The fruit drop from the CAS building and the Aristophanes plays and Fish Worship Trio and Dean Johnson‘s impressive piano playing skills… so many fond memories!
Core was more than just classes and lectures, it was films and reading groups, and opportunities to take in works of art that were not offered anywhere else. Through the Core I was able to develop a rich intellectual life because I was constantly offered challenges and pushed to reach out for more.
4. How did your time in Core play into your current professional life?
As a librarian, it is very important to continuously seek out opportunities to learn things that are outside your area of expertise. Thanks to the Core, I came to librarianship extremely well-prepared to meet those challenges. The Core instilled in me a desire to learn by exposing me to things that I didn’t even know were there for the taking.
5. What do you hope this program achieves (or continues to achieve) in the next 25 years?
I hope Core continues to attract talented professors and undergraduates to undertake the important work of continuing the conversations that have come to us from antiquity so that we can continue to make sense of the world today.
6. This wouldn’t be a Core profile if we didn’t ask: What are you currently reading?
I am currently reading Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, and Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 by Stephen E. Ambrose.
7. St. Augustine says, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.” Do you have any travel experiences you would like to share?
I currently live in the mountains of the province of Cadiz in Andalusia, Spain but I have been very fortunate in that I have had the opportunity to travel extensively. While I don’t have any specific stories, I do want to encourage anyone who may be reading this to travel as much as possible because aside from education, travel is the best way to spend your money any day, hands down.
8. What quote, from a Core author or otherwise, sums up what Core taught you about life?
I have a quote from a Core science professor, I’m sorry to say that I can’t remember his name, but I do remember he said “If you are happy as a clam all the time, then you are probably a clam.” [Sounds like Prof. Marscher! -eds.] This quote resonates with the idea I picked up in Core that there is usually a lot more going on than meets the eye in any given area of life. While difficult, it pays to forgo our automatic responses and reflect.
A quote I would like to share with all my Core people comes from Hafez:
And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth,
You owe me.
Look what happens with love like that.
It lights up the sky.
Grecia welcomes snail mail from friends and former classmates. She can be contacted at:
Grecia Alvarez C/ Fuente, no. 1
11680 Algodonales (Cadiz)
Spain
