Goodbye Boston: Reflections of My Past 7 Years – Part 3

The year is 2015, and I spent more than half of it in Europe. One of the best decisions I’ve made in my life is to study aboard. It was an absolutely unforgettable experience. It fueled my thirst to travel more, and it’s led to my desire to become a digital nomad. Since I didn’t spend those months living in Boston, I will keep this post shorter than the others.

I entered the year on school winter break and would continue to be on break until mid-February. I got accepted to study aboard in Germany, and their academic year started late, so I had a long break. I did visit my friends in Boston for a few days. They had an open room in the apartment I used to live in, so I got to stay there. Those days were awesome. I didn’t have any classes, so I just hung out with friends all day. Boston also got hit with major snowstorms during that period, so we had multiple snow days, which was unprecedented. For me, it meant more time to chill with my friends, who now also didn’t have classes.

I eventually left for Germany around Valentine’s Day. I remember how stressed I was, because there was a snow storm on the day I was meant to depart for the US. I was worried that I wouldn’t make the airport on time, and even if I did, that the plane wouldn’t take off. Luckily, everything went smoothly. I met up with my friends in New York, and we shared a room near the airport. The next day, we all departed for Germany.

I will skip over to July, which is when I returned home. I will write about studying abroad in a different post.

I returned to New York City and met my parents there.

New York is such an awesome city. I can’t wait to move there one day. You will know how much I love NYC if you check out my post here.

During that summer, I did visit Boston once. Because my friend was the RA at a school dorm, I got to stay there for free. I don’t any significant memories from those days, but here is a cool art piece I saw in the city.

This was a piece of art that was in downtown Boston. It was a 3D light display that covered a small park.

In September, I started my junior year in college, which would be one of the most stressful and memorable year in college.

My good friend broke a part of his spine diving into shallow water over the summer, so he had several medical problems. It was tough for him, and I felt bad that he had to deal with that situation, especially the difficult recovery process while being in school. He eventually had to take a medical leave. i didn’t blame him, but it sucked to not have him around that year.

I had the toughest academic year due to the difficulty and amount of classes I took. I almost failed several high-level engineering classes. It sucked to not be able to answer more than 50% of the questions on these exams, but thankfully I wasn’t the only one. I got so many scores in the 50-60 range, but due to the curve, I ended up with average grades. I don’t understand why professors make these exams so difficult if the curve will just bring up the letter grade for everyone anyways. It’s not worth getting a 100, when a 70 will yield the same letter grade. I did not do well that year, but I also became closer with my engineering classmates, because we all suffered together.

I also partied a lot more that year. My frat hosted parties every weekend. I also lived with 7 other brothers, so we always got drunk beforehand and went to the house together. It was nice to have that camaraderie, even though i wasn’t that close with most of them. I still liked the Greek Life experience though, because I got invited to parties all the time. Remember in my freshman year, I had to wander around to find parties to be let in, so it was a nice change of pace to be the ones who hosted these parties. I also managed door duties sometimes, which meant I got to be the person to let others in or to turn others away. It was cool.

I look like a fool at a frat party

For the rest of that first semester, it was a blur between all the studying and partying I did. It flew by, especially compared to the months I spent in Europe, where every day felt unique.

This is a short post, like I expected. I will post the next one soon.