Friday’s Student Involvement Fair will ruin your college career—not necessarily in the worst of ways, but (for any freshmen reading) you can reasonably expect to throw away two-thirds of your college career on a completely random activity.
And odds are, it will have little or nothing to do with your chosen major. It might be a matter of which table you stop by first, or it might be directly correlated to your opinion of a tablecloth. A random walk down Linden Lane on Friday will prove an incredible risk for most of BC’s career-oriented, forward looking recruits. Many freshmen will quite confidently choose five to 10 activities—looking back on the success of their respective high school careers—and assume, with some luck, they’ll wind up president of two or three. Hedging your bets and spreading out your time is a wise strategy here, if only for the reason that it will gloriously fail.
Make no mistake—it will be one (or potentially two) organizations that ruin any plans you might have, steal away your time and money, as well as an undisclosed anount of GPA points along the way. The best advice I can give is to find your life-ruiner as quickly and haphazardly as possible, and commit to it immediately, before you realize just how much free time you might find yourself with otherwise.
As someone who has spent many a Friday night photographing marginally attended concerts and looking for random event flyers in deserted hallways, I must disclose that I can tell you frightfully little about BC’s vibrant social culture. From what I hear, it does exist. I have, however, had plenty of exposure to dozens of performing groups at BC, and hope to offer a short guide to the arts on your random walk down Linden Lane.
A Cappella Groups
Make no mistake—we’re really talking about cults here. From what I hear, there’s a fair deal of inbreeding between them, as well as plenty of other bizarre traditions to accompany said mating practices. Getting accepted into an a cappella group, however, is perhaps the closest you’ll get to winning at freshman year—immediately bestowing on the lucky few all the benefits of being an upperclassmen.
I would strongly recommend attending at least one a cappella show during your first semester at BC. And if you’re interested in entering one of the University’s most coveted subcultures, I would recommend auditioning for a few, as many groups are looking for only specific voice parts (even if they don’t disclose that they are) and also are interested in how your personality fits with the group.
Dance Teams
Every year, one of BC’s most impressively attended events is Showdown, a massive dance competition in Conte Forum that shows off several of the campus’ dance groups. While auditions for some of these organizations can be very competitive, part of the allure of BC’s dance scene is that many are not, and even the more difficult groups to get into tend to be very accommodating to those who haven’t danced before, but are eager to learn. There also are several performance groups tied to culture clubs that are designed to teach you a new type of dance in a no-risk environment. If you want to dance at BC, there almost certainly will be an opportunity to do it, even if you are first rejected.
Comedy Groups
BC takes its comedy seriously. Because of the small size of the few groups here, getting brought into one is a more unlikely result of your random walk down Linden Lane. That said, BC routinely receives regional recognition for the strength of its comedy groups. These groups practice more than most any on campus, and have a strong sense of community.
Theater
Please refer to above entry on “a cappella groups.”
These few categories cover much of what you’ll see in the arts on Linden Lane, but certainly not all of it. If you happen upon a table at the Student Involvement Fair, and think, What the hell is this (and then no one sitting at the table can offer a concrete explanation of it either), promptly sign yourself up. It might just be the best of countless terrible mistakes you happen to make your freshman year.
Featured Image by Graham Beck / Heights Senior Staff
