But We are Measly College Students!!!

Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 9:14 PM
I should be blogging in my social psychology blog, since the assignment is due very very soon, but whatevs. My life seems to be more important than the issues of blind conformity and what not right now....OR IS IT??? HMMM. But anyway, updates on last time...
  1. I love my new green ipod nano. I love music.
  2. I got the CSA Culture Show position...yay :) I'm extremely excited to be working with the new e-board, especially since I rather like all the other officers.
  3. I'm being pro-active!!
So first off, since BC is awesome and Jesuit, I didn't have school from Thursday to Monday :) So I took full advantage of our Easter break to visit D & M down at NYU, since I haven't seen either of them since winter break. It was a really fun and crazy trip, and I have to say I think if I went to NYU I would legit be an alcoholic lol. Drunk kids wandering the whole of NYC is super fun and ridiculous, but I don't know if I'd be able to handle that every weekend haha. Also, drinking 5/7 days last week is a bit too much...I feel bad for my liver. Thursday night was a complete shit show, so D and I took Friday off to recover. Saturday was more fun, karaoking and journeying to get my first taste of White Castle...hehe sorry New Yorkers, I still love In-n-Out more. I love the BoltBus and it's wireless internet :) It makes the 4 hour bus ride a lot better...but more dizzy. I was glad to be back at BC though...After wondering all of first semester and a bit of second whether I had picked the right school when I was pondering between BC and NYU, I'm pretty sure now that I made the right choice. And that decision makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :)

So along the lines of being pro-active...I'm starting to be a lot more productive with my schoolwork, actually getting shit done. I'm also applying for summer jobs and looking for internships, even though the chances of the latter are slim :/. I also emailed a professor who is doing research here at BC regarding psych and the performing arts to ask if I could possibly interview for a research assistant position in her lab for next year...so hopefully that'll pan out :) Now if I could only get myself to go to class....hahhaha.

On a much bigger scale, there's been a huge issue recently at BC about the unnamed Asian American Scholarship, the way it's been for the past dozen years or so. Having the only unnamed scholarship on campus perpetuates the idea that there are no important Asian figures or heroes, and thus the culture clubs have been trying to get the scholarship named for the past couple of years. This year, we're trying to get it named after Aung San Suu Kyi, a political prisoner, activist, and Nobel Peace Prize winner currently imprisoned in Burma. On a similar note, there is a complete lack of AHANA (Asian Hispanic African Native American-the term we use at BC for minorities) faculty and Asian American studies classes, to the point where Asian American Studies isn't even an option for a major. Basically, Boston College has constantly failed to recognize the worth and importance of Asian students on it's campus.

So April is APAHM (Asian Pacific American Heritage Month), so yesterday was the annual festival in our plaza. During one of the acts, we had a flash mob moment for silence. Wearing the shirts with Aung San Suu Kyi's face on it, holding up a sign that said "Without more Asian American Studies courses, we have no voice", gagging my mouth with a strip of baby teal cloth, seeing hundreds of students gathered in the plaza with their hands over their mouths to honor this moment of silence....It's so powerful, what we as college students can do. What we as people can do. It's so great, I wish I had pictures of it. I will post them up whenever I find them :)

Combined with the festival, there was also a rally for free speech at BC. Recently, an invitation for Bill Ayers to speak on our campus was rescinded, due to threats from the community after they learned of his scheduled appearance. Bill Ayers, now a professor at UIllinois of Chicago, was a part of the radical and sometimes violent anti-war organization, the Weather Underground, in th 1960s and 70s. There was a backlash after the cancellation, leading to said rally. Sitting there listening to the professors and the administration and a guest lawyer speak about our rights, and the importance of first amendmant values rather than rights, and the necessity of free thinking to become a leading intellectual center...It feels good to be a part of something more important than just my GPA for this semester or a beer pong tournament.

I think that it's so easy to lose sight of the big picture, especially as college students. We are not really living in the "real world", per se (I spelled it right this time Yasmine), and thus it's much too easy to just go to class, do our work, party on the weekends, and have that be the whole of our college experience. I want more!! I want to be intellectually challenged, I want to make a difference, and I want to make a difference. As I have heard often before, "If Boston College is the same when I left as when I entered, then I have failed"...based off of a more famous quote I think, but the message is the same. I hope that on CSA e-board, I will be able to start taking the steps that I need to do what I want to, and grow infinitely as a person.


College is so different from what I expected, but not in a bad way.

1 Responses to But We are Measly College Students!!!

  1. Yas Says:

    Good for you :-)