Happy Holidays! Amid the chaos at Boston College right now, don’t forget the joy this time of year brings. Now is the perfect time to give and receive kindness, care, and gratitude. Reach out and spread some holiday cheer, whether by texting your family and friends or complimenting a stranger.
At the beginning of the school year, I felt lost. I needed to completely rearrange my classes, apply to jobs I was uncertain about, rediscover my place at Boston College after six months abroad, make amends with someone, and spend time with the friends I love while also trying to meet new people.
“Who decides what comfort is, anyway?” I find myself asking this when one of the students from Upper makes fun of my current living situation.
The temperatures are cooling down, the Gasson Quad Christmas tree has assumed position, and holiday classics can be heard playing in Newbury Street stores. The holidays are finally here! In just a few short days, we’ll be enjoying a feast of mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie with our families—a much-deserved break from the endless hustle and bustle of the fall semester.
I’m thankful for every bit of Mac 113—the navy-blue couches we inherited from Will’s childhood home, the bulky printer that malfunctions more often than not, and the string lights that Laboy hung up during our sophomore year. More importantly, I’m thankful for the office-goers I’ve spent hundreds of hours editing, arguing, and laughing with over the past three years.
For as long as I’ve known how to, I’ve loved reading. In middle school, I always joined my school’s annual competition to see who could read the most books over the summer. The last week of school, I would roam the Barnes and Nobles in my neighborhood, accumulating a pile of books taller than I was and paying for them with the B&N gift cards I received every Christmas from my relatives. In September, after a long summer of reading, I was always crowned one of the winners.
The first thing I noticed without my headphones was how dependent I am on the distraction of music. I live in a quaint and homey Mod, and even something as simple as walking to the Walsh laundry room—a one-and-a-half minute journey, at most—always required my AirPods. I grew uncomfortable doing so without them. The walk was shorter than the length of a song, yet I loved the reassurance that I would not have to talk to anyone I ran into.
I have always been a planner. My notes app is filled with to-do lists, reminders, and anecdotes—a tangible, terrifyingly disorganized snapshot of the inside of my brain. I came to college with a set plan—a political science major on a pre-medical track, setting myself up to go to medical school.
After Boston College football pulled out an exciting, well-fought victory against Syracuse, about a quarter of the BC student section finally trickled out of their place in Alumni Stadium. Where were the rest? Already gone, and had been gone for a while. Those empty stands were antithetical to the turnout at the previous night’s hockey game against Maine, featuring a line wrapping around the back of Conte Forum and a student section that was full and rowdy until the very end of the game.
On Nov. 30, 2022, ChatGPT launched for the public, forever altering the academic landscape. The sudden, widespread accessibility of the platform presented University administrators with a series of unprecedented challenges: keeping up with this unpredictable technology, educating professors about the benefits and drawbacks of these platforms, and determining guidelines for the ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education.
