Category: Nicole (CAS’23)

Club Spotlight: SVSN!

By Nicole Chiulli (CAS’23)

Coming into college, there were some things from my life in New York that I knew I wasn’t prepared to give up. Throughout high school, I spent a lot of time working with individuals with disabilities – I interned with a child psychologist where I met kids with varying forms of neurodivergence, and I worked for an organization which provided recreational programs for adolescents and adults with physical and mental disabilities. Through these experiences, I made so many genuine connections with amazing people; I had the opportunity to learn from individuals who see the world differently than I do, and I knew for sure that I wanted to continue this during my college career. To any prospective student who’s looking for something similar in their own future college, or any incoming freshman just looking for a fun and rewarding club to join, this post is for you!

SVSN stands for Student Volunteers for Special Needs, though I will add a disclaimer that the name may be changing soon. The student-run organization was founded at BU around 15 years ago; we are aware that the terminology is rather outdated, and are in the process of hopefully selecting a new name for our group. The goal of SVSN is to provide support for individuals with disabilities in the Boston area in a number of ways. Our primary activity is hosting Friday Night Club (FNC), a social event which happens a few Friday nights each month. We invite individuals with disabilities from around Boston to join us on campus to play games, listen to music, do arts and crafts, eat snacks and chat! We alternate hosting responsibilities with our sister club at Harvard, which means that some weeks we travel to Harvard to have FNCs there, which is always a fun excursion.

Beyond FNCs we are also currently working with Perkins School for the Blind, a school in Watertown, MA that provides all types of services for people with visual, auditory, and multiple impairment disabilities. We’ve helped out with a variety of things there, from painting one of their buildings and doing green space clean-ups to organizing their Braille library and assisting at their fundraising/awareness 5k walk.  These larger events are usually on the weekends, though there are additional volunteer opportunities with Perkins during the week for anyone who is interested!

Our club is pretty small, and with the pandemic over the past few years we’ve definitely faced challenges in finding ways to safely make a difference in our community. Now that things are moving back towards normalcy, we are excited to hopefully expand both our number of members and our volunteer opportunities. SVSN is low commitment – we send out a list of events happening each month, and our members can sign up for as many or as few as they want; it’s a very easy way to get involved with the local community and meet some fantastic people. Volunteers who attend our events regularly are also able to apply for any open executive board positions at the end of each year, so if you’re someone who wants to hold a meaningful leadership role during your time at BU, SVSN might be for you! If you’re interested, you can check out our instagram page (@svsnbu) or email me (nchiulli@bu.edu) with any questions. For incoming freshmen, you can also find our table at Splash next September in the Community Engagement section. We always have tons of fun, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to make even a small difference in the larger Boston community. If you’ve read this far and SVSN seems like a group for you, I hope to see you next year!

Existential Crises and Cookies: My Experience in KHC UC 105

By Nicole Chiulli (CAS’23)

Liberty, Fanaticism (Religious and Secular), and Civic Unity (also known as UC105, a philosophy course); this was my Fall first-year seminar in KHC, and I’ll be honest - to this day, I still have no idea why I chose to take it.

I’ve always been a lover of STEM; I knew with absolute certainty coming into college that I was going to major in neuroscience. I appreciate the concreteness of science, the clear answers and tangible outcomes. It’s how I entered neuro in the first place - I studied psychology in high school, and found myself frustrated at the open-endedness of it all. It seemed to me that there were no actual answers; just contradicting theories, innumerable “what-if’s” and “possibly, maybe’s.” The subjectivity of it disheartened me. I was amazed by the human mind and all it entailed, but psychology was unfulfilling and general biology was unsatisfying. (Of course, once I discovered that I could major in neuroscience specifically, I was sold - going into painstaking detail about anything and everything neurobiological was exactly what I wanted.)

In other words, I thrive on working with the physical problems of the world. Which explains why, when I told my parents which course I chose for my first semester, they looked at me with a whole new level of incredulousness. My dad recovered first, concealing his confusion with a hesitant, “Well, I’m glad you’re leaving your comfort zone.” My mom asked me point blank: “Why on earth would you do that?”

I really didn’t have an answer. I remember scrolling through the first-year seminar options, meticulously reading each description. They all looked interesting, and a good number of them lined up with subjects I liked. And yet, for some reason, I got stuck on UC105. I kept going back to the description, couldn’t get it out of my head despite the many choices which fit me better. I had never taken a class before on the topics it listed, had never even mentioned them throughout high school. Philosophy was something completely unfamiliar to me, and everything I knew about myself suggested that I would hate it.

I took it anyway. I remember my first day of the class, walking through the doors of the School of Theology; it was held in a cozy little room on the fifth floor where there was a single long table and, three out of the four walls were entirely covered by bookshelves. There were twelve of us, and we sat around the table with Professor Griswold at the head. We went over the course structure - there were no exams, no final projects. We simply had to read different material for every class by various philosophers; then, every week we each had to write a one page paper which somehow connected to the class topics. Over the semester, we were all expected to read at least two of our papers out loud to the class and lead discussion, but other than that, there were no assignments.

I remember trying to write my very first paper and having no idea where to begin. These papers had no prompts, just a strict one-page limit and the vague direction to be thoughtful. This was bizarre to me, and it was two in the morning, and all of the philosophical jargon from the readings was making my brain hurt. So, I wrote a page about how entirely confused I was. I pointed out all of the things I didn’t understand, and why I didn’t understand them, and how I was approaching them in my head. Basically, it was an entire page of my inner monologue, stream-of-consciousness style. The next day I regretfully handed it in with the knowledge that I was going to fail my first paper. Imagine my surprise when it was marked as an A.

From there, things only went up. Class consisted of an hour and fifteen minutes of pure conversation. We would talk, ask questions, argue - sometimes about the readings and our papers, sometimes about things going on in the world around us. I won’t spoil the topics for those who are planning on taking it, but they were ridiculously engaging. We would debate and debate and debate and come up with no answers. My suitemate happened to be in the class with me, and she and I would press on for hours back in our dorm. Both in and out of class, we would agonize over philosophical questions, having minor existential crises every other day. At some point in the semester, Professor Griswold began bringing in cookies - “vitamins for the mind,” as he called them - to sustain us throughout our endeavors. Every class ended with more questions than we started with, and we never reached any conclusions. It was frustrating and painful and confusing, and surprisingly, I loved every minute of it.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that we never would find the answers, and that that was okay. I learned that thinking through the abstract, impossible questions isn’t pointless, even when there’s no solution in sight. I gained a better understanding of myself, my friends and my world in the process (and ate a whole lot of cookies). To this day, UC105 remains my favorite class I’ve ever taken. The professor was amazing, the topics were fascinating, and the class structure was awesome. I don’t know why I took it, but I’m incredibly glad that I did.