OK, seniors, I need everyone to stay calm. There must be a solution. On May 22, if we all just refuse to leave our apartments and dorms, effectively staging a “StuVi-sit-in,” then they cannot make us graduate. I, for one, would much rather be staring at the million-dollar Boston skyline view in my Student Village apartment than at the quarter-million dollar diploma I will be handed at Nickerson Field. It is a numbers game here, people. Obviously I am trying to hold on to the most valuable investment!
Alas, we all must depart the dorm sometime. Just as we packed our bags and checked out of our childhood homes when we started freshman year (the same abodes which many of us are ironically about to check back into), it is time to move on. The way my fellow seniors are talking, it sounds like we are being moved out and immediately marched to the gulag. Yes, life outside of college is going to be much different and we will have more responsibility. Yes, we will no longer be able to justify less-than-proper societal behavior by claiming to be students. Yes, many of us have no idea what we are doing (myself included) and are terrified of entering the vast unknown called “the real world.” However, I do not think this is a bad thing. In fact, I look forward to it.
Of course, I am not entirely jumping for joy at the thought of leaving the place I have called my home for the last four years. One reason I am saddened to leave BU is because this school is still filled with mystery for me. Take Mugar, for example: it is like a chamber of secrets! Why is there a plaster cast of Napoleon’s face? Is the third floor really the “second best place to pick up good-looking college women” as allegedly reported by Playboy magazine?” (Full disclosure: I study there all the time and have yet to be hit on or—wait, never mind. Just noticed the “good looking” requirement.) Perhaps the most pressing inquiry in my mind is why do we keep our teaching fellows in cages on the 5th floor?
Another reason for my reluctance in catching the next Amtrak train out of here (besides the obvious fact that it involves riding Amtrak) is I also have a very incomplete bucket list. You know, that inventory of special college or Boston-specific activities to do you made as an adorable freshman? Looking back, I have never ice skated on the Frog Pond, nor attended the Back Bay Ball, nor bought a sausage at 2 a.m. from the sausage man on Lansdowne Street. I am really crushed about that last one.
Of course, this list also evolves throughout your time as a student and while I was clearly an ambitious freshman, as a senior, my list consisted of only one line: “make it to graduation alive.” I suppose prioritizing survival undermines the concept of a list that highlights the things you want to do before you die but I look forward to the sense of accomplishment achieving this goal will bring. Actually, this is uncertain since I have to get through senior week first. (Side note to my roommates: do not let me fall off the boat during the harbor cruise.)
The most important lesson I’ve learned here, however, is that creating such a bucket list and counting on it to give you any truly valuable experiences is an absolutely futile exercise. There is no way I, nor any of my classmates, could have ever bullet pointed what our most memorable and important experiences would be. In fact, it is the decisions your make on a whim or the completely unforeseen choices you are faced with which lead you to the most interesting places in life. I discovered that during college, it is pointless to follow a specific course and it pays to stray from the path and take unexpected risks.
For example, I never would have guessed that one of my favorite and most influential courses would be one I accidentally stumbled upon since it was not offered through the College of Arts and Sciences. Through taking SED 214, Educating Global Citizens, I learned that sometimes you have to be brave and venture out of the comfort of your major. If you only ever take classes offered through your school, than there is simply no way you are receiving a comprehensive and beneficial education.
Even writing this column was a complete shot in the dark. I am not a College of Communication student (which might actually be an advantage) nor do I have any special writing experience. Yet for the past year and a half, I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to express my opinions for my fellow classmates to read. Or to at least briefly skim during a lecture before moving onto the Soduku. Producing a weekly column would never had made my freshman bucket list, but it has been one of the most satisfactory experiences of my college career. Plus many adoring fans have told me I have a future with The New York Times (and by “adoring fans” I mean my grandmother).
Finally, I could have never predicted a life-altering illness that knocked me down and almost out the beginning of my junior year. I know I am not alone in facing such a predicament since in the past four years many of my peers have faced similar crises. They may feel impossible to recover from but we do manage to pick ourselves up and move on to become resilient people. We all know how “What doesn’t kill you…” is suppose to end but I think an even better finish to the caveat is “Gives you one hell of a better perspective on life.” Needless to say, my naïve 18-year-old self never planned on being forced to drop out of school for part of a semester and none of us ever plan on facing catastrophe. It inevitably happens, though, and while it may feel like the “worst of times” while in the middle of it, when you emerge stronger, the “best of times” are almost always right ahead.
It was the experiences that arose completely unexpected that held the greatest impact for me during my four years at BU and so I want to ask my fellow seniors why we fear graduating and facing our unpredictable post-graduate lives. Starting on May 23rd, many of our lives will become a tabula rasa, a completely blank slate. I know we desperately want to know how this gaping white space of our future will be filled but that is not what life is about. It is exciting to know that the best parts of our future are impossible to anticipate now and that we cannot even fathom the success and opportunity which awaits us. Experience, after all, is not innate: it is acquired.
Alright guys, I have decided to call off the sit-in and have accepted that it is time to take one long last look at the best view of Boston. I have no idea what the future holds for me but I do know that none of us can change the world by living in a dorm room for the rest of our lives.
Steph Hagen is a senior at the College of Arts and Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at shagen@bu.edu.
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