Boston Life

It's a little late this Thursday, but here is the promised post. It is not an outfit because I still don't have someone to take my photos, and to be honest I'm nervous about telling my friends about my blog. Anyway when I decided to start my blog, the first person I told was Sydney Apple. For good reason too because Syd is 1) one of my best friends, 2)so very creative in photography and writing, and 3) because i knew she would support me. I asked her to guest post so that you can see a little bit of the magic I see in her. We also decided that we would be the best travel pair because we love exploring and just being part of new cities and places. I hope you enjoy her post…when she sent it to me it was just perfect. It gives another take on college life or the beginning of it at least! And Syd: I miss you and I love you! See you soon!

Guest Post by Sydney Apple:

“The world is full of information; but you can’t paint every leaf on the tree.”

So spoke my art professor this morning in my 9 am painting class. I couldn’t exactly tell you why, but in this moment, while I sipped my morning coffee and munched on a bagel (I take my breakfast to-go for the early morning classes), his words struck me. So much so that I decided to open up google keep and make a note of the exact words he spoke for this blog post.

For any of you who don’t know, I am Allison’s friend from high school. One might say “best friends.” Upholding the adage “opposites attract,” Allison and I could not be more different. In short, she’s the nice, bubbly, idealistic one and I’m the cynical, introverted, sarcastic one. Yet, she asked me to be a guest writer every once and a while and so here I am. My instructions were simply to write “about anything…college experience or fun exploration.”

So I decided to wait until something seemed worthwhile to write about (or at least to get me started) and stumbled upon these sage words by Professor Conley. It got me thinking about college life. I’m a freshman at Boston College and while this is by no means my first time away from home, it’s definitely a change. It’s not that I have been overwhelmed by the change or that I am homesick at all – but there are a myriad of changes that I have been observing, the same way a painter would examine the leaves on the trees. But yet, we take things in as a whole; we can’t paint every leaf on the tree. We paint the tree as a whole and detail a few specific leaves and branches and maybe a flower budding here or there. The artist gets to pick and choose what is important. He or she can prove to the viewer that the tree is real without itemizing every pixel of the picture. So I have compiled some little details and snapshots of my new life: changes I have noticed that don’t necessarily color my entire Boston Experience, but they are my proof that this is real.

Examples:

The very first week of school was “welcome week.” Essentially it was a week full of useless events to orient us on campus and force us to bond with random people. Well, one of the options was DiscoverBoston: a trip to some undisclosed location in the heart of the city for you to explore. Turns out they took us to the aquarium. While penguins are alright, that was not our idea of discovering Boston. So a friend and I walked inside, waited until everyone else rounded the corner, and went right back outside. Specifically: we walked out to Boston Harbor (approximately 5 seconds away), bought hot dogs from a street vendor and sat on the grass by the water watching clouds pass by. Purely picturesque.

Fast-forward to when I was sitting in my room (I have been blessed by the residential living gods and am in a single room) and realized that it looked like a dungeon without decorations even after hanging lights and making a picture collage. So…I may or may not have made some impulse buys on etsy.

Fast-forward to when there was a literal beast crawling on my ceiling. It was somewhere between a tarantula and a centipede and was exponentially more terrifying. It was so huge that my neighbor from across the hall couldn’t even suck it up into her vacuum. COLLEGE IS SCARY OK?!

Fast-forward to activity fair day when I was so terrifyingly overwhelmed by all the people yelling at me to join their clubs that I just left and didn’t sign up for anything. I am not sure if I am currently doing any clubs I guess…?

Fast-forward to pretty much every mealtime when I get a picture from my friends in our group message with a picture of an apple doing something at lunch (because my last name is apple).

Fast-forward to whenever my friends and I go out and on our way back home from lower campus we inevitably have to pee and wander through our library until we find the bathrooms.

Fast-forward to last weekend when my Dad came in town to Boston (well, barely: his flight was cancelled and he had to stay a night in Charlotte, NC before making it up here) and we drove up to Kennebunkport, Maine for my cousin’s wedding. It was the perfect weekend break that I needed. Plus the town is adorable and I had the best lobster I have ever consumed. AND I bought a succulent (!!!!) (let’s hope it stays alive).

Fast forward again to just yesterday where I finished my homework relatively early and my friend and I decided to just lay in bed and put on a movie. We decided to watch Clueless because neither of us had ever seen it. 

Fast forward to today: my first day doing laundry when I discovered that the money I have loaded on my card (eaglebucks) is not the right type of money loaded on my card to actually pay for it. So I had to rely on the generosity of other people in the laundry room to scrounge up the 6 quarters I needed.

So that’s my current life: Boston exploring, online shopping, monster slaying, overwhelming, overeating, drunken wandering, weekend vacationing, straight-up lounging, and begging for money. Cheers to college!

Sydney Apple