When I was a little kid, my older sisters told me I was never going to touch the bottom of the pool. I wasn’t “old enough.” It’s amazing how memory works. I forget so much of my early years, but I vividly remember swimming down those 10 feet, floatie around my waist, curling my fingers against the small white tiles—just to spite them.
In the words of a better columnist than me: We’ve arrived, inevitably, at the end of things. Unlike her, I can’t make my last Heights column a bohemian masterwork of creative self-reflection. But I can leave you with a few of the world’s most common pieces of advice—phrases so familiar we call them cliches. Overused? Maybe. But, through my life at BC, I’ve come to believe they’re overused for a reason.
A couple months ago, I ran into a friend of mine at Hillside. I hadn’t seen her in a while, so I proposed dinner plans at some point that week. “I’d love to,” she responded. “But let me check my GCal …” In seconds, her computer was open, and Google Calendar (colloquially referred to as GCal) was pulled up.
Saweetie’s not the only one performing on campus.
One of my friends is a Boston College microcelebrity. Everyone either knows him personally or at least knows of him. Whenever I walk anywhere with him on campus, he’s bound to bump into someone he knows every ten feet.
When this happens, I joke that he’s on his “Campus World Tour,” with stops like the Rat, Gasson Quad, or the stairs next to Iggy as hotspots for his loyal “fans.”
Ever since then, I’ve started treating my own walks on campus like I’m on tour. My friend’s more like Flo Rida—a crowd favorite. Me? I’m more like Saweetie—a little less mainstream, met with mixed reactions.
“The memories you make abroad are the ones that will last a lifetime.” I’d be willing to bet that nearly everyone studying abroad has heard this sentiment in some form or another. Whether it was older cousins telling stories about their semesters in Italy or professors wishing me luck on my semester away, the idea that my travels would take up permanent residence in my memory was drilled into my conscience before I even left Boston.
Today, I want to focus on issues that concern us as students, particularly our international peers. The Trump administration is enacting a new executive order concerning these students, and I believe this raises several important questions.
If you hear cackling on the “million-dollar stairs” every Thursday at 1:15 p.m, I apologize for the inconvenience my friends and I may be causing. In a rare occurrence, all our schedules have aligned, affording us the opportunity to all walk to class hand in hand. These walks are quite hilarious—for us, anyway. My friends tend to say the most outrageous things at the most inappropriate times, and this walk is no exception.
Germany’s economy has faced stagnation over the past three years, following two years of economic downturn. In response, the newly elected chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has introduced an ambitious plan to revitalize the economy through increased defense and infrastructure spending.
When my parents reminisce over moments long, long ago, they always mention how they feel it had happened just the day before. I’d always assumed that was a hyperbole. But now, I think back to one of the final days of 10th grade, and it truly feels like yesterday.
We are watching, in real time, the undoing of a century’s worth of progress. Nowadays, I stew over the continuous affronts on women, executive order after executive order. In a reflection of these changes, the contents of the annual Human Rights Report have slimmed this year, no longer covering the vast sub-categories on rape and domestic violence, reproductive rights, female genital mutilation, and discrimination against women.
