Retrospect: 2019 - 2020 Academic Year & BU Transfer Experience

Excerpt from “Four Down, Five to Go” - Feb. 1, 2019

On Thursday I visited Boston University. At first, I found the campus’ size and appearance domineering (not intimidating, mind you, but domineering). In some ways, I felt as if I was just walking through the streets of Downtown Syracuse: a lot of concrete buildings that look depressing in contrast to gray skies and snow on the ground. But as I toured the campus, and had opportunities to walk through the buildings, I began to feel more comfortable and I began to appreciate the campus’ appearance. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to tour their Communications School, but my tour guide was a film major who was going into pre-law so she could pursue entertainment law. She was also a part of several productions on campus, and the prospect of being involved in consistent television and radio productions interested me. However, as I left BU I didn’t feel excited about the prospect of going there.

Excerpt from “Making My Final Decision as An Associate of Applied Science” - Jun. 19, 2019

After I heard from USC I decided that on the morning of June 1, 2019 I would submit my enrollment deposit to Boston University. The more I thought about it and said it out loud the more right it sounded. I submitted my deposit, and I started the process of becoming a student: planning advising appointments and registering for orientation and all that jazz. As I continued my research and my enrollment, I was reminded of all the reasons I applied to BU in the first place. With each step of the process, and with each passing day, I have grown more and more excited to continue my academic career at Boston University’s College of Communications this fall.

“It’s a little bit funny…”

Before I can even get into writing about the initial transition, my first year at BU, and everything that has been going on in my life, I have to first address the elephant in the room.

I literally started writing this post barely three weeks into the spring semester and it felt like I had been in classes for well over a month. The work load was what I would have expected at the time, and I was anxiously awaiting spring break, knowing I would be ready for it when the time came. But lo and behold, when Spring Break did arrive, it practically didn’t end. COVID-19 happened, and I was swept off my feet and forced to quickly move out of Boston and to return to Syracuse. Remote classes became the new normal until the spring semester ended, and they were an entirely different kind of exhausting altogether. Once those classes were over, I decided to be proactive and to take some summer classes to make sure I could graduate from BU on time (more on that later), and basically I ended up turning 2020 into the year of academics: a year in which I had practically zero break from doing school work or anything related to school.

So now, here we are, and I am sitting in my apartment on campus back in Boston looking back at it all, ready to tell the story of the last year from the very beginning, as quickly as I possibly can.

Enrollment & Initial Advising

Not long after my last post, I began exchanging emails with academic advisors at Boston University, specifically in the College of Communication. We walked through confirming all of the courses that transferred, and what classes I would be required to take in order to graduate. I was able to petition and use paper work and previous experience to get out of a lot of requirements, however, this was not the case for some arguably ridiculous lower level course requirements that were mandated of me to be taken. At the time, I was happy with what I was working with, and I was confident that I would be able to work through whatever mire of bureaucracy would be put in my way… I wasn’t entirely wrong, but in time, I did end up learning that there were some doors that would remain shut.

With that being said, the timing could not have been better. I transferred into BU just at the cutoff for transfer students in order to avoid the BU Hub— a core class requirements system that is not dissimilar from similar curricula that is being adapted in universities across the country. The BU Hub does not allow students to get out of these requirements even if they took courses that fulfill them at another higher education institution, in order to get Hub Units, students must take the course at BU. So, very thankfully, I was able to dodge that bullet. However, I learned that came with a cost: a College of Arts & Sciences (CAS) Focus.

I learned later, in Spring 2020, that changes were being made to the Hub for transfer students at the College of Communication (COM) that required less of them in terms of the humanities and liberal arts. This softened the blows of the lower level requirements I was mandated to take, despite my ability to demonstrate that I had taken courses in the past which fulfilled these requirements.

With all of that said, I must offer one piece of advise to anybody who is looking to transfer out of their current academic institution into another: always check the transfer policies. Chances are, there are some classes that will not be allowed to transfer because the school you want to transfer into, will only allow you to fulfill that degree requirement if you take it with them. From a cynical perspective, at its core this idea is a profit policy. Colleges and universities have transfer students for a shorter period of time than they do the rest of their undergraduates, so naturally, they will find a way to get that extra penny from you. It’s blunt, it’s not right, but it’s true.

The Fall 2019 Semester

Prior to choosing BU, I had visited Boston several times in late 2018 and going into and through early 2019. On several bus trips, I tended to notice that there seemed to be a bubble in time and space somewhere in Massachusetts where the road seemed to drag on endlessly, and what was meant to be a mere 5 or 6 hours, ended up being closer to 7 or 8 hours instead. When my parents and I loaded up our rental van and drove to Boston in August of last year, we thankfully had no such experience.

The move-in process was smooth, and I was assigned a building with central heating and air conditioning and a private bathroom for myself and the five other people that I was living with in our six person suite. My roommate, a fellow transfer student from Massachusetts, and I had found each other over the summer via BU’s housing portal and we got along very well. We also got along with the other four guys we were living with, however in time, we did discover some issues with the suite, and we did have some conflicts to resolve. In the end, we made it all work out just fine.

I took to Boston living rather quickly, however I found the dining hall to be disappointing and dismal. I realized that I could cook better and cheaper for myself, so my roommate and I resolved to get an apartment the next academic year (which we did). By the Spring semester, almost every week, I would go to my girlfriend’s apartment across town and we would do meal prep together so she wouldn’t have to cook as much during the week while she was working on internship, and so I wouldn’t have to go to the dining hall for every meal.

Eventually, I began working in an administrative office on campus. I found the work rewarding and my coworkers friendly. The job paid well, but it didn’t take long for me to miss the student interaction and service that came from working with students when I was at Career Services at SUNY OCC.

Meanwhile, I did a good deal of shifting between classes trying to cement my schedule while also trying to maneuver my way around the University’s profit policies. My frustrations grew and I began to hatch an idea for forming some form of coalition to advocate for transfer students. I ended up putting this on the back burner as the semester went on.

I made a few friends here and there in classes and in student organizations. I gravitated towards BUTV10 and ended up working on the station’s only game show Pop Showdown. I had intended to also join and work with BU OnBroadway, but I sadly could not find the time.

A couple of my friends came to visit me in November, which was a fun experience. That Thanksgiving break, my girlfriend and I took an airplane together for the first time to return to Syracuse for the holiday. The semester thankfully ended relatively quickly, and I found myself back in Syracuse for the winter, excited to return to Boston and begin the Spring semester.

The Spring 2020 Semester (Before COVID-19)

At the start of the new year, I began to make it a point of recording a short video every single day and taking a second of that video in order to compose a longer video that shows a second of everyday of this year. Every month, I’ve been posting the video of that given month to my personal Instagram account. I intend to post the full video of 2020 on my public account at the end of this year.

To clear an elephant from the room, I ended up quitting my on campus job by the end of February. I did for this a variety of reasons, and I know that I made the right decision. Not only because I wasn’t happy in my work, but because I realized that in time my job would turn into a conflict of interest given my aspirations for reforming University policy. This was precipitated by my discovery of more bureaucratic chicanery that I learned about regarding how my classes had transferred to BU. It was at that time I learned I would have to overload during my senior year in order to graduate on time. This was not acceptable to me, not only for myself, but for future transfer students.

Prior to my realization and my departure from my job, I was connected with various people on campus who were looking to make things better for transfer students. In particular, I met a young man who had just transferred from Colorado and had somehow acquired for himself a seat in the BU Student Government Senate as a Senator speaking on the behalf of transfer students. He and I began to discuss my ideas for a coalition to support transfer students and to advocate on their issues. In time, he informed me that he was stepping down from his senate seat and told me that I should run to take it. I gave it some thought, and I decided that I should give it a go. To make a long story short, in a BU Student Government election that saw its largest turnout in years, I was elected to the BU Student Government Senate as a member of the newly formed Transfers United Party. I began my term several days ago and my first Senate meeting is tomorrow night.

In my leisurely time, I finally entered BU OnBroadway and managed to secure myself a crew management position on the production of their production of the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee as the head of the sound department. I worked with a lot of interesting people, saw some great talent, and made a few new friends and acquaintances.

With regards to my studies, I took courses in directing, adapting literature to film, screenwriting, and WWI. It was in this semester that I discovered my CAS Focus: History (I am presently studying the Second World War in a graduate level course. I highly recommend reading or listening to the audiobook of The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. There’s a lot of interesting information written in understandable terms, and further these physicists are all such lively characters and you would not believe some of the things they did in both their professional and leisurely lives). Prior to Spring Break, I was greatly enjoying my studies. I was being introduced to new literature and films, and I had an incredible cross-curricular learning experience between my directing class and my intro to screenwriting class. But as I wrote at the beginning of this post, I was very much ready for Spring Break to arrive.

The friends who had visited me back in November came again the weekend that Spring Break began. They stayed the night in my suite and then we took a train back to Syracuse… COVID-19 was just beginning to enter the US and we had no idea what was coming next.

The Spring 2020 Semester (Amidst COVID-19)

I ended up leaving Syracuse and quickly returning to Boston to pack up my entire suite. My girlfriend who was already in Boston, not having a spring break due to her internship, had packed up her apartment as well. She and I, along with her sister coming up from New York City, departed from Boston with all due haste in anticipation of the coming quarantine. We made the right decision.

Classes shifted to being online, as did the BU StuGov elections, the new normal began to set in, and before I knew it, I was adapting to an entirely different kind of living. My friends and I began to meet weekly on Zoom for a game night. When my 21st Birthday came around, we celebrated together on Zoom.

My classes somehow became mildly easier, however, the online format was an entirely different kind of draining and exhausting. Without the walking between classes, the walking in the city, and the regular exercise I was getting at the gym, the physical stress began to manifest itself in my sleep patterns. I managed and finished the semester strong, but not unlike any of my peers or anyone else in the world, there was certainly an adjustment to life under COVID-19.

All of that being said, I was able to more fully lean into my creative side. I cooked and baked more. I got into making sourdough bread and regularly feeding a sourdough starter. I began to explore expanding on my short film “Duty Bound” and wrote a roughly 20-page short film script entitled “Helen.” I hope to expand the story world of that script into a pilot for a series of the same name (I’ve already started work on the show bible).

On the plus side, BU refunded students a portion of our food and board costs along with a small portion of tuition fees. This gave me both the idea and ability to take classes online at SUNY OCC that I knew would transfer to BU or that I could get approved for transfer to BU. In doing this, not only did I ensure that I would be able to graduate on time, but I also put myself in a spot where my course load in Spring 2021 will be considerably easier compared to my past few years in academia.

The Present

So now, here I am. I’m back in Boston, operating under COVID-19 restrictions taking hybrid classes both in person and over Zoom. I’m cooking far more often and loving every moment of it, and I’ve begun to look for work both in the current academic year, and for after I graduate in May. I’m beginning my work in the Senate tomorrow night, and in the not too distant future, there will be a tab on this website dedicated entirely to my work as a Senator. In terms of my current film projects, I’m currently working with a great team on a short film with the working title “Blue Notes” where I am serving as a producer and the director of photography.

Now that I’ve finally gotten all of these updates out, it’s safe to assume that I will go back to posting regularly again in the not too distant future. That being said, I was hoping to do that in June 2019 and also in February 2020… After all, “the road goes ever on and on” and “the greatest adventure is what lies ahead,” I don’t know exactly what’s coming next for me, but I am excited for the future and I’m looking forward with a positive outlook.