The Importance of Atmosphere

I look up from my laptop to stare out of the window in front of me. It’s April and the sporadic showers are a reminder that it’s spring. My view of the Boston Common is gray and blurred by the downpour, but I can still make out the outlines. Watching the raindrops play connect-the-dot on the glass gives me shivers; reminding me of how the rain felt against my skin the same time same place last year.

Sitting in my dorm room, it still feels surreal to me when I take a step back to look at where I am now. If I never came to the campus visit, I never would have fallen in love with the school or had the epiphany that many people my age often forget during that high-stress crunch time in deciding their future: why pay to study something that won’t make you happy?

Visiting Boston with my parents last April was the first time I had been to New England. The purpose of the trip was to visit two colleges, Boston University as a Public Relations major and Emerson College as a Writing, Literature, and Publishing major. And although the weather was surprisingly alien to what I was used to in California, I embraced the difference, the foreignness. Both of the colleges I visited were wonderful, but what really won me over was the opportunity to be happy, and location, location, location.

Right at the center of downtown Boston, Emerson College is based in a prime location of Boston’s theatre district. Two blocks to the right is Boston’s Chinatown where a variety of different Asian cuisines and cultures mesh together into one mecca. About a mile down the adjacent street is the North End neighborhood; also known as “Little Italy,” the North End offers an abundance of Italian restaurants from pizza to pasta, cannoli to gelato. Directly across the street from the campus are the Boston Common (a public park) and the Public Garden; these patches of green in the middle of concrete and industry is like Boston’s version of New York City’s Central Park. To the left is Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, known for its rows of Victorian brownstone homes turned to business.

It was actually while I was walking down Back Bay’s Newbury Street, with endless shops on either side of me and drenched through my unprepared clothing, when I realized that I had fallen in love with Boston and chose Emerson College as my school. Although a degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing isn’t the most practical, it only felt right to be studying something that I love in a city that I love.