It seems as though every year, the Binghamton Review makes its September cover something like, “Welcome to Binghamton University: Not the BU You Wanted,” or some other word play highlighting BU’s distinction from Boston University and the ongoing belief that a lot of moneyed students just kind of end up here without fully choosing it. Two years ago, I thought it was funny, and I laughed in bitter camaraderie. But now, at the start of my third year here, I’ve realized it cuts this place pretty short.
I won’t feed you an optimistic, live-life-to-the-fullest sob story about why this place is awesome, although, indeed, you should at least try to relax here. No one will care about whether or not your undergraduate alma mater had enough prestige in 10 years. What matters most to me is how influential BU ended up being in shaping my disposition and why it might be a good school for people who think they’re above it.
When I was a freshman, I was fresh out of cushy suburbia. Living at home had its stressors, my family its piece of the middle class woes pie, but it was hardly anything uncomfortable, aside from just generally suffering as an adolescent. Like I’ve said, I didn’t particularly want to come here. I got some financial aid from Tulane University in New Orleans, but I was fooling myself in thinking it was enough to cover the astronomical cost of private school. I was bummed when I realized I wasn’t going. To put it simply, I was a huge brat.
I chide myself now for being so spoiled and upset over being able to go away from home to get an education at a good school, but I needed that. I was cleansing the spoon-fed, bourgeois ego inside of me, as she cried and felt like garbage and tried to journal her fears away. I was an under-actualized, socially awkward, liberal, but most importantly curious caterpillar. Too fearful to transfer and too fearful to just sit inside all day, I actually tried to engage with the school and found, somewhere in between the mobs of tired, relentless students on campus and the Greek-infested dorms, that I happened to be learning a hell of a lot. And not just the stuff they test you on. I was learning how to support myself, how to be vocal outside of my comfort zone and, frankly, how to be less of a brat.
BU is a unique place. The school doesn’t tout “public Ivy” for nothing; it has extremely strong academics and a thriving student community. But more than that, it brings together a city that needs some tender love and care and an army of young people who want and probably expect a lot out of life. It forces students to consider how to be happy, how to be hardworking, how to be vulnerable, in an environment that might not inspire them to do so based on comfort alone.
BU isn’t in the Ivy League, it’s not a private school and it doesn’t have the money or the ethos to pull in Spring Fling bands that people actually want to go see. But those things don’t make a great school, or a worthwhile college experience. If you wanted to come here for that, you probably really needed to come here.