The 2018 spring semester’s Welcome Week marks the start of many new beginnings to the school year, including many opportunities that the Student Arts and Events Council (SAEC) provide for the campus.
The past week paved way to many creative activities such as mini golf, a s’mores bar, ice sculptures, and an anticipated favorite—headphone disco. Other happenings this week included the involvement and volunteer fairs as well as the final basketball games of the season, where the cheerleading club had the chance to show off their new sparkly uniforms.
Tiziana “Tizy” Maddaloni, a senior vocal student at UMass Boston, transferred from Bunker Hill Community College. Like many other college students, she spent her break working, but also practicing music with band members (also from UMass Boston), catching up on her last semester’s musical training as well as painting. As we met in a practice room with her friend playing some background music on the piano, she started rapping Jay-Z’s part to the song “Frontin’” by Pharrell. She joked that in the future, she hopes to become “Beyonce” level with her performing.
When asked how her goals for the spring semester, Tizy responded with ideas for an upcoming club on campus: a music club. While she was a student leader at BHCC and also an arts high school alumna, she hopes that a music club will allow for the campus to have more self-expression and unity.
Another UMass Boston student, a bio-chem major with a humble sense of humor who wished to remain anonymous, described his vacation as “freezing cold.” With the first week of classes under his belt, he expressed an honest but understandable feeling of difficulty—balancing school and personal responsibilities like family, especially as a serious honors student with a grade point average that’s above average. Even so, he still couldn’t help but make a pillow by the mini golf stations on Monday stating, “I appreciate free stuff as a college student.”
With aspirations of being a surgeon, he says that he wants to work hard to get through the semester and enjoys something that will take a lot of time to get good at: “I think that’s a good enough goal, to make it to summer vacation ’cause that break is much longer.”
Gwendolyn Bui is a nursing major at UMass Boston in her second year. She has openly expressed her school spirit to the campus, in the stands, at home basketball games, and also through her involvement with a lengthy list of campus organizations, including the Beacon Voyages for Service, Student Nurses Association, Beacon Ambassadors program, the Sail Club, UMB Orchestra, Nursing SAIL, The Mass Media, the Photography Club, and Campus Kitchens. She appreciates SAEC for hosting these events and hopes that there will be a spring ball this semester. After attending the event titled “Movie Under the Stars,” as well as mini golf with her boss and friends, she is now looking forward to the dance but most importantly, to the valuable connections, the clinical training, and volunteering at nursing homes which will bring her closer to her dream of becoming a traveling nurse.
I hope to remind the student body at UMass Boston, whether you are just starting a new path or voyaging on one already begun, to try your best and to enjoy where the sail takes you.