Last weekend, my roommate hosted a prospective Boston University student. The last prospective freshman I talked to turned down four years in Boston to go to the University of Maryland, so I retraced my steps and wondered where I had let her down.
It started out well. I took her to Newbury Street, where she window-shopped in the spring sunshine picturing herself as a sophisticated urban college student. I took her to the Student Village, where she marveled at the closets with doors.
I think it was when I took her with me to visit my friends in Danielson Hall that things took a turn for the worse. One look at the deteriorating walls and the sinks randomly placed in the hallways sent her running back to suburbia.
Our new guest told me she wanted to attend BU because she had fallen in love with the campus.
I felt like a traitor after asking incredulously, “You did?” I held back the impulse to say, “What campus?” but this is what I told her instead:
Boston University isn’t exactly picturesque. The scenic pictures on the posters are probably more airbrushed than the models in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. BU makes the campus appear scenic by taking pictures from a helicopters’ distance so that you can only see the Castle, the tops of some buildings on Bay State and Marsh Plaza cropped asymmetrically to avoid acknowledging that the College of Arts and Sciences building exists. Those police officers you see in Marsh Plaza are only here on Fridays for your parents to see. You won’t see them again unless you’re caught underage-drinking at a party.
Speaking of parties, even though the tour books tell you there are a million things to do in the city, you probably won’t do any of them in four years at college. There is little to no Greek scene, which may be good or bad depending on how you look at it, but this reduces many students to spending their freshman year, before their friends have apartments, wandering around Allston and getting frostbite on their extremities so they can find somewhere to get drunk.
This brings me to the Boston weather. Thinking of going to school in California, Chicago, Alaska or Florida? You can get a taste of all of them here in Boston and all in the same week.
Don’t let anyone tell you that Chicago is the windy city. It’s Boston, the land of skeleton umbrellas scattered across Commonwealth Avenue. Beware of the steps behind the West Campus dorms and the parking lot in front of the Student Village because you might get blown away.
If you’re thinking that your tropical respite from the bitter wind and cold is the BU beach, think again. The “beach” is actually a hill — with grass, not sand — that overlooks scenic Storrow Drive.
BU is very proud of its grassy hill, since it is the oasis of a real campus. Our classroom buildings are more centralized than most campuses, but the dorms are spread out, and the entire area is interspersed with non-BU buildings. This is what people mean when they say we have no campus. It is also what it means to get the real city experience.
Since it is pretty centralized, it won’t be too difficult to learn your way around — as long as abbreviations don’t confuse you. Just ask your RA how to take the T to eat at the GSU and you’ll be on your way to CAS in no time.
We have more abbreviations than the military, and sometimes you might even feel as if you’re in the military. Or, in the case of the Warren Towers residents, as if you’re in jail. With the brick walls, communal bathrooms and the visiting hours euphemistically termed the Guest Policy, you may as well be.
As you may have noticed, we have no school spirit. You’ll get fliers in your mailbox bribing you to go to BU sporting events, but the bleachers are still empty. Maybe you won’t even notice that our chancellor decided to get rid of the football team a few years ago. Let’s just hope you like hockey.
Truth be told, I like a lot about this University. I have made the best group of friends here that a person could ask for, and I have found the students in my classes and around campus to be noticeably talkative and friendly.
Most of the dorms and apartments are falling apart, but when you’re surrounded by great people it still feels like home. A university this large is always crippled by its own bureaucracy, but having this many students allows you to pick and choose your friends and create your own sense of community. The College of Communication and the students in it have never made me feel like a number.
Freshman year, I knew I’d made the right decision when I started noticing a phenomenon of smiling students on the streets. Not people smiling with their friends: students walking alone and smiling, happy with where they are. If you ever feel lonely or like a number at such a big school, look for the smiling students and you’ll remember why you came here.
I can complain with the best of them, but with graduation looming, I wish I could do it all over again. And, for the record, I wouldn’t have gone to Maryland.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
