From a young age I was asked to figure things out for myself; college was one of them. Here are a few tips I picked up my Freshman year to make it through:

• If you need new clothes for the year, buy them during Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving). By November, you’ll know what kind of clothing suites you in the cooler Boston weather. This was important coming from California; I finally found out what thermals and hoodies are for (and no, they are not just to make you look cool… though they do help).You’ll be all set to brave the cold weather when you get back to school.

• If you only feel like paying for one semester T pass, go with spring semester. Despite the word “spring” most of the semester takes place in the winter, and its freezing. You won’t want to be waiting around for the BUS (Boston University bus) and you definitely won’t want to walk.

• The only reason you really have to do laundry is if you run out of underwear/socks, so buy enough pairs that you only need to do laundry every month or so. Those quarters and convenience points you pump into the laundry machine can build up.

• You can save money by drying all your clothes in one dryer. For a greener approach, buy a clothes drying rack and let them air dry for three hours.

• Take advantage of the automatic work-study placement available only to first-semester freshman. This guarantees a work-study job your first semester. Ask about it in the work-study office.

• In general, prices get more expensive as you get closer to the city. Remember this when buying your basics like shampoo and soap.

• Quickie Jobs are great – take advantage of them to earn some money for books and weekend hijinx.

• Buy all your books online through websites like Amazon and Half.com. You’ll be amazed at how much money you can save. Then sell them to one of the book collectors you see around campus at the end of the semester.

• You can always read books for free by borrowing them from the library.

• Cancel your sports pass if you do not find yourself using it after your first year. It is $100.00 off your bill.

• Use ratemyprofessor.com, but always maintain a healthy level of skepticism. If students (online or off) say a teacher is amazing, consider taking the class, even if it’s not in your field of study.

• Talk to upperclassmen: “A wise man learns from his mistake, a wiser man learns from his friends.” They can answer SO many of the questions you have and show you a really good time. Put yourself in their shoes: would you decide to help a little, timid, freshman asking for advice? Of course you would.

• Do some damage control first semester: learn to study. Even if you could get by in high school without studying (many of us did), studying helps. Put aside an hour a day to look over your notes or to review the day’s PowerPoint (many professors post them online).

• Study for the final during the semester: color code your notes, make note cards as you go along, and memorize terms and facts.

• There are secret spots where you can use your dining points, like the Hilllel house and SMG. Papa Johns, Dominoes Pizza, and Buick Street (a little convenience store) accepts them as well.

• If you get anything out of first semester, find out how you study best. Do you need a certain temperature? Do you like using a whiteboard? Is it helpful to talk it out with someone? This will allow you adapt more quickly to future studying challenges.

• Study what interests you. Curiosity motivates learning.

• West is the best dining hall, hands down. It has the most variety. Plus, the gym is right across the street, so you can burn off the calories when you’re done.

• Free coffee is all over campus, you just have to look.

• Grab a bunch of free pizza coupons from SPLASH. In fact, get a bunch of free stuff at SPLASH, if you don’t want something, give it to other people. Who knows – you might make a friend.

• For the first couple of weeks everyone is looking for friends. Many freshmen are extremely open for a conversation with someone even if they don’t know the person. It is incredibly easy to get to know people within the first couple of weeks. Say “What’s up?”, comment on what they’re wearing, talk to them about the game last night, something, anything to get them talking. A few weeks later it will become little trickier because everyone has their little cliques, so now’s the time.

• It’s common for you to get homesick the 6th or 7th week. Remember that you’re not the only one. You will miss the familiarity of everything, maybe not your parents, or your city, but you’ll miss knowing how everything works. It will feel like you’re the only one because not many people are putting their business out there. Strike up a conversation during the 6th or 7th week about home and sure enough, it will come out that they miss the familiarity of home just as much as you do.

• The first time I really felt the absence of my parents is when I got sick. Go to student health and make sure you get a note for your professors, they are usually understanding without one, but the note is for those who aren’t.

• Getting up and staying up for an 8am class is surprisingly difficult. Just so you know.

• There is usually free food at Fraternity Rush events.

• Never have a lab due Monday – if you get stumped over the weekend, there is no time to go to office hours to figure it out.

• You can get from Warren Towers to Mugar and still remain indoors for most of the time. This especially comes in handy when it’s cold/snowing/crowded outside. From Warren you cross the street and go into CAS. You then walk all the way down the hall where you exit to Marsh Chapel. Then you enter the School of Theology, go though the basement and exit at Mugar (avoiding that nasty wind tunnel).

• Many places, especially near campus give you a student discount with your ID – you just have to ask. BU students get free admission to The Museum of Fine Arts, for instance.

• You can order meals to go (“Rhetty-to-go meals”) from the dining hall. Check out the BU dining website.

• Proof read your papers.

• Every assignment graded or not, counts for something. Never ever neglect to turn something in. If you can’t make a deadline, turn what you have in for partial credit or contact your professor ASAP. Points add up in the end. Remember, you can also try asking for an extension.

• A Smartphone can be your best friend if you use it wisely. Synced email is great for keeping in touch with professors and classmates, and apps like Grades 2, Evernote, and Redlaser can help you stay organized. Plus having a virtual map on your phone is key. The MBTA Alerts app tells you when the busses are coming and FourSquare can help you discover new things around the city.

• If you want to do well, don’t sleep in class. No one is going to be there to wake you up for that lecture that makes up 30% of the test. And no, copying your friend’s notes does not suffice.

• Pizza Days on Brighton Avenue doesn’t accept convenience points, but they do offer a 50% discount on all pizza orders for BU students – you can get a large cheese for $6.00.

• Get a bike. Bicycling is one of the most fun and most efficient ways to explore the city and to get from place to place.

I’ve been putting a lot of work into my Puch lately, and was so eager to try it out on a long ride that I decided to ride from Boston to my hometown of Medway, Massachusetts. Moments before I was going to leave, however, there was a knock at the door. The postman handed a gleeful me a package containing a new part for my bike. I had to decide: ride the bike as is, or put this new part on before you leave. I chose the latter, and it was a mistake.

Once I got out to Newton the moped sputtered and finally stalled, or shut off. I was able to get it started again, but it still sounded funky. The way I saw it, I was already in Newton: too late to turn back now. So I kept riding. But by the time I reached Natick, the bike decided it no longer wanted to run, and it didn’t.

An engine needs three things to run: spark (from the spark plug),  fuel, and compression (in the cylinder). I checked spark first – had a strong spark, no problem. Next I unhooked the fuel line from the carburetor to see if gas was flowing – sure enough it was. And then there was compression. To check compression you plug the hole where the spark plug screws in with your thumb and pedal the  moped. The pressure inside the cylinder should blow your finger right off the little hole. Unfortunately, the air leaked out the sides of the cylinder and my thumb remained right where it was. No compression, no start.

Oh yeah. And it was pouring rain.

In my rush to put on my new part – a head for the bike’s cylinder – I had stripped a couple screws that needed to be perfectly tight to get compression. If only I had waited. But a broken down moped, like I said before, is all part of the fun of mopeding – there’s a sense of accomplishment about being able to diagnose a problem and fix it. But for now, I didn’t have what I needed, so I decided to walk up the street and see if I could find a restaurant. Both of my parents were out of state, so I needed to find a place to hang for a couple hours until they could pick me up.

I ended up at Tio Juan’s Margaritas, a Mexican restaurant. I locked my defeated bike outside in the rain, and took a seat at the bar. I enjoyed a delicious burrito and more Roy Rogers (coke and grenadine) than anyone has drank in a single sitting ever (yes, this is confirmed by Guinness). Oh, and a little guac on the side (of course).

I could have been really depressed knowing that once I finished my meal, I would have to return to a broken moped in the parking lot in the rain. Instead I focused on how delicious my burrito was and how generous the bartender was with the grenadine in my coke. And I was rewarded: when I went outside the rain had stopped and the sun was shining.

I hadn’t realized it, but it turned out I was less than a mile from the mall. Naturally I headed over. In all of my efforts to start the moped on the side of the road, I had more or less ruined my shoes on the pedals. So I went to Journey’s and got a shiny new pair of Converse All Stars (my first pair of Converse, actually). Then I treated myself to a pretzel and headed  back out to the garage to see if I could get this moped going.

I couldn’t.

But I did figure out exactly what I needed to fix it: four studs to connect the cylinder head more tightly so I could get compression. I orfdered them for just $12.00 on my smartphone, and in no time my dad came to pick me up. A few days later, studs in hand, the bike is running great.

So I guess this post isn’t really about mopeds, but more about looking at the bright side of things, which is something I’m learning to do. Rather than looking at my botched ride to Medway as a bundle of unfortunate occurrences, I see a delicious meal, a sunny walk, new shoes, and ride back home with my dad. All things considered (thanks NPR), that’s not that bad of a day. And besides. Half the fun of having a moped is fixing it when it breaks. (And it breaks like every single day.)

While we sometimes use our lights to replace kitchen appliances, we sometimes use kitchen tools to work with our lights. I’m talking about one of the most useful film tools a gaffer or grip (the people on set who do the lighting) has available: aluminum foil. Not just any kind of aluminum foil, however, but blackwrap – aluminum foil painted black. One might be surprised how many mundane tools like this we use every day on set, but after a while, you get used to people asking you for surprising things.

On BU MFA student Alvaro Congosto’s thesis film shoot this past week, we used a crazy amount of black wrap lighting Debby Krim’s art studio in South Boston for a scene. Alvaro wanted the lights in Debby’s studio to form circles around the pieces of art work we brought to hang up. In order to do this, we cut out pieces of light proof black wrap and made long cylinders that we folded over the fixtures. This allowed us to shape the light into the circles Alvaro wanted. The effect was just right, and blackwrap, though an odd tool, was the perfect one to get what we were looking for.

Debby thought it looked so good that she decided to keep the blackwrap on the fixtures to light her own work. That’s pretty cool.

Trying out truck cuisine just got a whole lot easier for BU students and residents in Boston. Just today 15 new permanent food truck locations debuted in Boston. Two of these new locations are on BU’s campus, one by Kenmore and one by the BU Bridge. I am excited to see what different kind of food I can try and trucks that I can track down.

Today I went to one of the food trucks on BU’s campus for lunch. The name of the food truck I went to is called “Clover,” and it serves healthy/vegetarian food. I had a brown sugar lemonade, which was very tasty and refreshing. I ate a chickpea fritter sandwich which was basically a modern and summery twist on a traditional falafel sandwich. All together my meal cost $7, which is not bad at all considering how fresh, delicious and filling everything was! Check out the photos below to see what else is on Clover’s menu or visit their blog: http://cloverfoodtruck.com/.

If you’re interested in finding out more about food trucks in Boston visit this site: http://www.cityofboston.gov/business/mobile/

I am a member of the Mugar Student Work Group. This information would make you think that I had some general knowledge about how Mugar operates–think again.  This summer I’ve been working at Mugar (doing graphic design projects) from about 10am-5pm Monday through Thursday, and then on Fridays I usually work from home because no one else comes in on Fridays and our isolated, box-of-a-room can get lonely. But this past Friday I switched things up– switching things up rarely ends well for me.

On Friday I scheduled lunch with a few friends at the GSU and thought it was just too convenient to not work in Mugar that day. (That was my first mistake.) So after lunch I arrived in our cozy little room around 1pm and got down to business.

side-note: I am currently working on a coloring book for Mugar to distribute at Comm Ave Fair. You can all get one on September 5 at 2pm by the Law Building where we’ll be stationed!

Anyway, I was making a lot of progress on the coloring book. Then 5 o’clock rolls around, and I think to myself, “Just push through until 6pm and finish up this section!” (That was my second mistake). Just a little background on the room I work in: other than our room being isolated and and kind of cramped, it only has one 8″x10″ window that looks out into the stairwell, and it is not equipped with a speaker for the library’s P.A. system. SO little did I know that there had been multiple announcements warning the library inhabitants that Mugar Library was closing at 5pm. I also could not see any sign of the library becoming deserted through our little window.

Oblivious, I finally left our room at 6pm to find all of the computers empty. This seemed reasonable to me because who really wants to spend their Friday evening at the library. But then I took a few more steps into the main area to find the IT Help Center AND the front desk abandoned with the lights slightly dimmed. “Hmm… this can’t be good,” I thought. And then for some reason I became more worried about a serial killer popping out of a dim corner than getting out of the library. (Years of scary movies and crime dramas will do that to ya.)

When I finally tried to leave, I was relieved that I could open the door and then immediately struck with panic when the alarm went off. I instinctively called my boss for help. Thankfully she picked up on her day off (because she’s awesome), and she suggested that I call the BU Police to assure them that no one was trying to break into the library. So I did just that, and of course it all worked out fine in the end. But it’s funny how a few decisions can really spice up a Friday evening.

And for all of you students out there, during the summer Mugar closes at 11pm Sunday- Thursday and closes at 5pm on Friday and Saturday.=)

When I was came to BU as a freshman I was excited to choose classes but wasn’t exactly thrilled when it came to “filling requirements,” and I dreaded the writing requirement in particular. It is not that I didn’t like writing, it was just that it was required and there were so many options I wasn’t sure which class would be a good fit for me. All I was given to make my decision was a laundry list of class titles and a few sentences describing a semester’s worth of work. Luckily I chose two classes that I loved a lot but it still  daunting to have to choose without knowing what the class is all about.

Fortunately for future freshmen programs are being launched to help invite them into a larger community within the city through different classroom experiences. The College of Arts and Sciences is trying to actively engage freshmen with the creation of the First Year Experience Program. The program aims to create community beyond the classroom so that learning can take place anywhere providing students with the opportunity to learn through experience. And that’s exactly what professors Bill Marx and Tony Wallace have done with their class Theater Now!

According to the Theater Now website, “Students should begin to see themselves as members of a learning community that extends beyond the boundaries of the individual classroom to encompass other students, faculty, and institutions.” Marx and Wallace have made the writing requirement more dynamic by immersing students into the city’s culture by turning theaters into classrooms.

Each semester Marx and Wallace pick out three plays that the class studies and then then class sees a production of these plays. Originally the class would study and see plays that were being performed at BU. Thanks to the support of Dean Sapiro and the College of Arts and Sciences First Year Experience program the class is now able to go see and study plays in Boston’s extensive theatrical community. And that isn’t the only way that Theater Now has expanded. Last semester there was only one section of Theater Now, but this coming Fall semester five sections of the class will be offered to students.

Marx and Wallace hope that the class helps further students’ understanding of the material by bringing them directly into the material. They explained that the typical way to study a play would be read it in class and discuss. The next level is to go out and experience the play being performed. A level above that would be have the playwright or an actor come in and speak to the class about the play, which is exactly what these professors are encouraging in their class.

Though the class requires that students sacrifice some time out of class to go see the play, many believe it is well worth the extra time commitment. If you don’t believe Marx and Wallace, just check out the video at the top of this post, which contains testimonials from past Theater Now students.

In addition to creating a unique learning experience outside of the classroom, Marx and Wallace are striving to enhance the classroom experience by making coursework interactive through the use of new media and social networks. When asked what they hope to see happen with Theater Now in the future, Marx states he “would love to see and study a new play that would knock everyone’s socks off. Something that says something about the contemporary world and something through which we can discover something about ourselves and the world around us.” Sounds ambitious, but then again so is this class and these professors!

To find out more about the Theater Now visit their website or contact Bill Marx (wmarx@bu.edu) and Tony Wallace (awal@bu.edu).

Tony Wallace and Bill Marx, creators of the Theater Now! class.

My parents and their siblings were the first generation in their respective families to attend college. I remember them describing the daunting process of entering academia with little guidance from their families and high schools. It was great to see that Boston University is recognizing the achievement of these students and welcoming these students and their families into life at BU.

Here are some pictures from that reception:

BU graduate student Padrick Ritch did a lot of location scouting for his MFA thesis film, “Limbus.” He needed a unique location for a surreal dream sequence: a 1970’s style trolley car – like the T, but older. He called around, he travelled around, and discovered that New England is speckled with trolley museums that have amassed huge collections of antique trolley cars and trains. Even the MBTA has a selection of retired vehicles that they rent out to filmmakers (at a fairly hefty price). Scheduling with the MBTA fell through, a trolley museum in Maine ended up being too far north, but the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven, Connecticut ended up being the perfect spot. My favorite part about that location? Road trip. For me (and I’m sure many others like me), nothing hits my idea of fun more than spending the weekend at a Motel 6 in Brandford, Connecticut with a group of talented filmmakers working together on making a movie. This weekend ruled.

Just like night shoots, however, this experience proved as challenging as it was enjoyable. Our 1970s trolley at the Shore Line Museum was located on train tracks cutting through a cramped barn. Our challenge was to light the inside of the train from outside, with only a few feet of space to do so. The goal was to make the windows look blown out – or to glow white – to enhance the dreamlike feel of the scene. To do this we covered all of the train’s windows in white sheets. In addition, in one shot a character needed to exit the side door of the train to face a huge white field. Using compact stands (also known as C-stands) we built a giant frame draped with white sheets. Because of the narrow passageway on the other side of the train, we had to use angled bounce board (white foam board that bounces light) to get light to the windows. It was an impressive set up, and in the end, worked extremely well.

Once the outside was lit, we needed to light the inside of the train with overhead fixtures. The original florescent bulbs built into the train cast an unsightly light that showed up greenish in the camera. Fortunately, a company called Kino Flo produces color-temperature balanced fluorescent light fixtures for use in film production. We tied the Kino Flo bulbs up the ceiling of the trolley car and ran cables to ballasts (power sources) on the ground. Like the outside set up, the inside was fairly intricate. But also like the other, this one was successful.

This weekend I learned the value of planning. Padrick and his crew arrived to this unique and appropriate location with a plan prepared – they had done their homework. The people in charge knew exactly what they wanted, and assembled a group of people capable of delivering it. When we arrived on set, we were immediately told what to put where and why. If, on the other hand, there had been no plan, valuable time would have been wasted preparing one on the spot that may or may not have worked.

Also this weekend I learned that Chuck’s Margarita Grille in East Haven, Connecticut serves up some mean Taco Salad. And the best meal to get at the Parthenon Diner is a blueberry waffle a la mode with french fries and marinara sauce. Yum.

From 10pm to 6am, a truckload of BU filmmakers (myself included) headed out to the suburbs to shoot a car crash scene for COM Graduate student Padrick Ritch’s MFA thesis film “Limbus.” We had a whole street to ourselves (blocked off on either end by police detail) that became our film set. For the first several hours we lit the dark road using various high-power fixtures, all plugged into a gas-powered generator rented from High-Output studios in Canton, MA. The dark street became a dynamic scene with creative backlighting to add depth to the frame, as well as key and fill lights mimicking a car’s headlights.

Setting all of that up was a lot of fun, but it was also exhausting. We tried to keep our energy up with fruit snacks, granola bars, 5-hour-energy, soda, sandwiches… did I mention I love craft services? But none of that could change the fact that by 3am, our bodies are usually ready to sleep. Luckily for me, mine was able to. By that time, we were ready to light a shot of a car crash victim lying motionless on the ground. Director of Photography Trevor Taylor (COM ’10) asked for a stand-in. Hallelujah. I gleefully volunteered.

Generally, we try not to make actors wait around set while we prepare a shot, but instead prefer to allow them to sit off to the side, to relax, enjoy some snacks and conversation while we go about our technical business. That’s where stand-ins come in, and this particular stand-in would have the privilege of lying down. And that stand in was me. I took a seat where the actor was going to lay, put my head back, closed my eyes, and let the crew light me as I drifted off to a restful nap. When they woke me up nearly an hour later, the sky was beginning to turn blue as the sun rose.

So as I said before, lighting that street was fun, challenging, and exhausting, but luckily for me, I got to stand in. And take a nap.

I’m a few months shy of 21, so I had to watch the win through a bar’s window. This, however, gave me the perfect advantage to capture the people flooding the streets after the game.

Mayor Menino is a pretty cool guy. As such, he arranged for some fireworks. Also, some kids rowdy fans climbed on top of stuff.

Some fans decided they wanted to flip a police bus. The police decided they didn’t like that.

When I got home, my roommate Ciara (who is visiting this summer from Ireland) was shocked at how wild people were reacting to the win. “Wait… you’re from Ireland… Aren’t your soccer fans supposed to be out of control?”

“Yeah, we get crazy, but this is ridiculous.” She went on record as saying that Boston partys harder than Ireland post-championship win.

I don’t know if that’s good, bad, or awesome.