Campus Chronicles

Gloriously red, tantalizingly green, or a harmonious tie-dye of the two, these voluptuously round beauties burst with tang upon every bite. No, this is not a creepy love story with some sort of multicolored monster, but an ode to the apple. Finally acknowledging the commonplace fruit that often gets forsaken for the more exotic pineapple or the more sassy grapefruit, I have recently become an apple convert.

After Columbus Day weekend, Facebook and Instagram feeds were cluttered with hundreds of various mid-pick, quirky, picturesque snapshots of the activity of the weekend: apple picking. Being from California, apple picking (anything picking in fact) was a foreign sport, but in the spirit of the season, I decided to give it a shot. One fine Saturday, I headed with a couple friends on a road trip up to Tougas Family Farms about an hour away and came back with over 200 pictures and an absurd amount of apples.

No longer are there trees lining the roads around campus, but art forms blazing yellow and orange. Walking now gives way to a heart-warming crunching sound as leaves are scattered with every step. Fall has finally come, and the campus has turned into an amazing alternate universe that we only get for so long every year. The facet of our campus that has impressed me so much recently is how amazing it is in the fall. Walking down Linden Lane or taking a stroll over to the Chestnut Hill T stop, fall seeps in from all directions, the warm and fuzzy feeling counteracting the crisp nip of the pre-winter chill. Weekends are no longer for homework, but for pumpkin picking and trips to apple orchards. Autumn treats making their rounds and cinnamon and nutmeg become the spices of the season.

    Excitement definitely got to me as the giant bag of fruit I brought back was a very aggressive undertaking, a fact I realized after my first batch of apple cupcakes and apple crisp. For weeks, my apartment has smelled of nothing but apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I have passed the initial attraction at the sight of all the options on the farm, the lust after the first spicy bite of the Empire Macintosh, and the honeymoon period that began with the taste of my first apple cupcake. From the tons of recipes I have read to the dozens of batches of apple goods I have created, my love affair with this underappreciated delicacy has reached full-on commitment.

But more than a creepy attachment to my new obsession came out of that trip. I have a newfound appreciation for Boston and greater New England and the culture of the place all of us BC students get to call home for four years. I wish someone had warned me earlier to get off campus, as there is so much that the area has to offer.

As much as it may seem so at times, we are not trapped in a bubble at BC. Getting out and experiencing what is around campus is such an integral part to college life. We chose BC partially, or primarily for some of us, because of its proximity to yet slight separation from the city.

A full four years at this University should be more than enough time to cover every corner of the place, but with parties on the weekends and work during the week, not to mention all the millions of other things that we all fill our time with, getting out becomes much more difficult. By forgetting to explore, we lose the part of the college experience that forces us to go outside into the bigger world beyond our campus.

Above all, college is a stepping-stone to prepare and propel students into their futures in the “real world,” and staying confined to the BC population certainly does not do that. Simply spending a day in the city makes students more knowledgeable about Boston culture, about important places and spaces in the city, and expands awareness of everything we will (sooner rather than later) get dropped into.

Having just come off of midterm season, and barely having time to breath, BC students should do something fun and relaxing in the coming weeks. It’s easy to get caught up in midterm season and restrict yourself to the path from O’Neill to your room, but there is so much available in greater Boston, and who knows, if you venture out you may even fall in love with your own apple.