Dreams Dashed, the sad story of the Boston University student

Commonwealth Avenue is generally a very collar-up area. It's beautiful and is home to many wealthy families out in the Newton area and borders America's most beautiful school, Boston College. On the other end, downtown, you have many expensive stores, restaurants, and hotels surrounded by beautiful brownstone buildings on both sides of the tree-lined streets. Both ends of Comm. Ave are places to be for the wealthy, beautiful, and intelligents of Boston, you know people like your superiors at Pinhead Nation.

But somewhere in the middle, something went terribly wrong. In the middle of Commonwealth Ave, you have hobos, burned out cars, and of course, Boston University. It is the polar opposite of the elite parts of Comm Ave. To be honest, when I go there, it reminds me of war-torn Sarajevo or depressed sections of old Leningrad. Considering the pollution, the filth, the lack of English-speaking inhabitants, the rat infestation, and the overabundance of concrete, it's no wonder that BU even makes volunteers in the Peace Corps depressed.

The majority of the students are foreigners who put on their button-down Euro shirts, minus the top three buttons since they never button them anyways, splash on some cheap designer fragrances in lieu of bathing, and spend their time at Landsdown Street listening to techno Euro-trash sound. Finding an actual American at BU is almost as difficult as actually being rejected by their admissions department (read: impossible).

Things are night and day between the Euros and the Americans. Most of the Euros, like most Americans outside of the Boston area, could care less about Boston University. They have no school pride and could care less where they are going to college, just as long as they have access to the clubs on Landsdowne Street and black designer clothes.

Then, there are the American students at BU. Although a rare find, these people really had life swing in the wrong direction when they were seniors in high school. When it was time to choose a college, they had faulty guidance counselors who didn't implore them not to waste their application fee by applying to a legitimate collar-up school like Boston College.

Unfortunately, most followed their pipe-dream until the end. Like most Boston-area students, they applied to Boston University as a safety school. But in the end, their applications to Boston College were used as toilet paper in many of Chestnut Hill's fine campus bathrooms after being laughed at during the BC faculty's annual Christmas party.

Needless to say, their applications to Boston University were accepted almost immediately. Admissions isn't much of an obstacle at BU as their Latin motto translates to "Just send us a check and we'll skip the entire admissions process". Then they waited...and waited...and waited. Sadly, when their got their letter from BC, it started "we regret to inform you...". If you're a BU student or grad, the 'Nation apologies for bringing up these bad memories again. Since most BC rejects never read the entire letter, they probably missed the last line that states "good luck at whatever God-awful institution that is pathetic enough to accept you and thanks for the $50 application fee". Also included in the rejection letter, of course, was a course selection guide for Boston University's upcoming semester.

Most professional therapists point to this moment when things went terribly wrong for the future BU students. Like Tony Montana in "Scarface" or Cameron Frye in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", this was the last straw to push them off the edge. After days of serious depression, they dug themselves out of their "hole" and dusted themselves off for a life far below the one them had dreamed. Then, in a feeling that only "new hatred" brings, they dug through the trash and pulled out their BC rejection letter, which serves as their daily motivation to remind them of their failure, and fuel their bitterness towards Boston College.

Every morning, BU grads wake up and prepare for a day serving BC grads our daily gourmet coffee and espresso, while thinking back of that terrible experience at their mailboxes. BU students, still smarting from the pain of being rejected from a top-tier university, learned to deal with being shipped off to the big city to Boston's second-tier school of higher learning (the pot smoking hippies at BU put the 'high' in higher learning).

As you know from above, all they are left with is thinking about their rejection from BC and the life they could have had. Seeing that beautiful school on the hill, so close, but yet so far, is at times too much to take. Instead of classy gothic buildings, they moved into grimy, disgusting, and roach infested Warren Towers. Then, it's off to dinner at Burger King, where they breath subway fumes while imagining what it would have been like to nibble on caviar while sitting under a nice patch of grass on BC's impeccibly manicured campus.

After a nice dinner of about 800 grams of fat, it's off to the hockey arena since it is the only sport that Boston University participates in. For the BU fan, it's a relief as they think "finally, I can be with my own people". Where else can one gather with others and simultaneously and randomly chant "BC sucks" as therapy to remind them of their rejection? No where else my friends. No where else.

As the great Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, "Boston University...you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy". No truer words were ever said.

Collar Up.

- Mav