Goodbye Boston: Reflections of My Past 7 Years – Part 1

This post has been long overdue.

After spending the last 7 years in Boston, I am finally moving on. I feel good to be honest. I am happy to leave Boston. Don’t get me wrong, I loved living in Boston. It’s a great city with a strong identity and interesting culture, but it’s also very small. I felt like I have seen everything there is in Boston. I have explored every neighborhood and been to most of the mainstream restaurants. 7 years is a long time in a city, and I got to see the development that occurred in that timespan. Now, it is time to move on; before I do, I want to document my experiences there.

So this will be a long post. It’s going to encompass 7 years of experience.

I moved to Boston when I started my undergrad at Boston University in 2013. Boston University, or BU as we call it, was one of the only schools I got into. I initially wasn’t thrilled with the school, because I didn’t like the lack of campus, high tuition, and low ranking. I thought the school wasn’t good enough for me. Of course, I was one of those kids who only wanted to go to the prestigious schools, mainly so I can brag about it and feel better about myself. Evidently, I clearly wasn’t “good enough” for Ivy League schools, because I got rejected from all my reaches. I clearly wasn’t as smart as I thought I was, so I ended up “settling” for BU.

Anyways, BU ended up being a roller-coaster ride in my 5 years there. Yes, I spent 5 whole years there: 4 in undergrad and 1 for a Master’s.

Let’s see, how should I go about presenting my experience? I think a timeline will probably work best, so here we go.

2013

My freshman year in college was fun; I’d like to think I got the full first year experience.

Boston Bombing

My first real experience with Boston, and BU in this case, is when I visited the school after I got accepted. This is also when the Boston Bombing just happened. The suspect at the time went into hiding, so the entire city went into a lockdown. My accepted student day was on that weekend when the suspect was still loose, so Boston was in lockdown but I didn’t know BU would be shut down. I didn’t get an email that morning, so my parents and I foolishly drove 2 hours down to Boston.

As we drove through the city, we were confused by the lack of cars on the streets. Usually coming into Boston is a hassle due to traffic, but we thought we got lucky that day when we didn’t run into a single car. Once we got on BU’s campus, we saw police car camped out at every single block. That’s when we realized that the city was shut down. I still remember driving around BU’s empty campus and seeing students looking out from their windows at us. It was eerie. Finally, we managed to find a BU security guard who confirmed that the school was also shut down, so no orientation for me.

We drove 2 hours to come into a city and college that were in lockdown, and we didn’t even know at the time. Before we went home though, we decided to check out Chinatown for good measure. Lo and behold, it was bustling. No one cared about the lockdown as the everyone was still operating as normal. It was slightly concerning, but I was also proud of my people that we didn’t give into fear. We left home with extra groceries that day.

Orientation

Orientation was the first real time I spent in Boston and at BU. For 3 days during summer, I would spend my time getting to know the school and my potential classmates. To be honest, it wasn’t that exciting, but I did meet some cool people.

I had a roommate for the first time in my life, though only for 2 days. He was on the lacrosse team and fit all the stereotype, but he was nice. We bonded at night when we shared stories of my high school experiences. He also would chew tobacco and spit into an empty water bottle. I thought that was cool and kinda wanted to try it. I still haven’t to this date.

I also got a nice long-sleeve, which I still wear.

Here’s me posing with my BU shirt in front of the McGill admissions building. I thought I was real cool.

This was the night before moving to Boston full time for school. I looked so nerdy here with my square-frame glasses. I’m also drinking champagne, because I was a young outlaw who didn’t care about illegal drinking…

FYSOP

I signed up for FYSOP (I forgot what it stood for), which is a volunteer program for all first year students that last a week before school officially began. I thought it would be a great opportunity to move in before the rush and hopefully meet some people.

I was assigned to a group of other students led by 3 older students. We were all in the “Kids” group, because that’s the cause we chose. I sincerely liked working with kids at the time. It was fun to make these kids smile and laugh, especially knowing how tough life was for them.

These kids were from struggling families who lived in shelters, so it felt good to make them happy for a brief moment. Nowadays, I feel like that is a very selfish mentality. That’s why I don’t support groups like Peace Corps or similar programs, because most people go to feel better about themselves rather than actually trying to make a difference. You can’t really help someone by giving them the bare minimum for a little awhile and then just leave. Anyways, sorry about the rant.

I had a good time doing this program.

Me and the boys. I felt like a big brother that day.

That first day outfit… I tried to look as cool as I could, which meant frat douche apparently.

Here I am moving in with all my stuff

Warren Towers – Floor 17B

I lived in Warren Towers during all of my freshman year. It was three towers that comprised of thousands of freshman inside. Oh and the best part, the designer of the building was a prison architect. Perfect!

On the first day there, I met other people who lived on the floor during a floor meet-and-greet. Some of them would end up becoming my closest friends. I remember I thought I would looks so cool if I showed up after going to the gym. “Look at this athletic guy who looks like he balls!” is what I hoped people would think. Instead, they probably thought “Why is this weirdo carrying around a basketball?”

Anyways, our floor quickly bonded. For the first few months, we did every freshman events together. Our RA was also relatively chill, so we all had a good vibe going. The guys were living on one side of the floor, while the girls lived on the other. We all got along fairly well, or so I thought. The boys and I would go out to events, dining hall, or Boston pretty often

Also, I had a random roommate from China. He rarely went to class and would stay up all night to play League of Legends with his friends from back home. Sometimes he would stay up until 3am. Occasionally he would shout into his computer. It was pretty annoying, but I got used to it eventually. For the most part, I spent my time with my good friend Casey and Calvin. They lived right next doors, so I hung out with them all the time.

Parties

Warren Towers was not known for the social dorm. Most of the kids who lived here were the studious type, me included. But I still wanted to party. I mean that’s what college is about, right?

The problem was that we didn’t know the people who threw parties, because at BU you had to be invited to them. My floor was close, but none of us were invited to any parties. So, we did what all the other uninvited freshman did: we crawled through Allston, the infamous neighborhood for frat houses and upperclassmen apartments.

We got turned away from so many places. Cold approaching a party with a group of guys will always be a terrible idea. We got rejected over and over. Though one time we pretended to be MIT students to sneak into a frat to find out that they were simply doing a taste test of taste-bud changing strips. Not a very fun time.

Eventually, I got into some parties because I made friends with a few girls. Yeah, I was killing it… NOT. We also ended up just getting drunk on our floor a few times. That was pretty fun.

Winter

Spending my first winter in the city was quite the experience, namely because having to walk everywhere in the snow was cold af. I ended up buying a lot of boots to get around the snow. Despite how terrible the weather was, it was fun to hang out with my friends in a white Boston.

That’s what happened in the second half of 2013, aka my first year in Boston. I didn’t cover everything obviously, so this will be a multi-part series. My first semester of freshman year was certainly pretty fun. I definitely did a lot, but there were also a lot of regrets. I did not list any of them… so this post is pretty positive overall.

Part 2!

Here is a video tribute