"As I look back on my four years on the Heights, I find gratitude in the friendships I’ve formed. If Jesuit education has taught me anything, it’s to focus on being authentic to myself and intentional in my time with others. Living an authentic life is something I’m still working on, but I’ve found that it’s helped me form and maintain the countless meaningful relationships that I’ve made at Boston College. I’m incredibly lucky and humbled to call so many amazing people my friends, and I’m forever grateful that not only did our paths cross, but our friendships will continue beyond our four years." - Jeff Wu ’20

"Greenwood, South Carolina will always hold a special place in my heart, as it was my first and last Appa trip. Though my trip members and I were building a home for a beautiful family, it was the community members who fed us, housed us, taught us, and welcomed us. Khalil Gibran said 'Work is love made visible,' and the work they did for us was just as important. Appa demonstrates how quickly shared experiences can bring people closer together and I am so glad that I was able to be a part of it." - Rachel King '20 | Read more about the home built in Greenwood: https://bit.ly/GreenwoodAppa

"After more than two years of the high school wrestling coach pestering me to join the team, he put out an interesting offer: If I come to watch a practice, he’ll never bother me again. Deal. But wrestling soon consumed my life. After my junior year of high school, I hurt my back. Various doctors all led to one conclusion: My senior season was off the table. Heartbroken, I had to figure out who I was without the sport I defined myself by. Without wrestling as a factor, Boston College quickly became my top choice. While the transition isn’t easy for anyone, I struggled to find my place at BC initially. Boston College EMS was a big part of making BC home freshman year. I met a group of people who shared my passion for helping others and medicine. Even still, something was missing from my life but I couldn’t put my finger on it. In the spring of my freshman year, my duty partner Sonja Goldman ‘19 was a gymnast that had joined the Boston College Coed Cheerleading team. She loved it and desperately tried to convince me to join since the team was short on guys. I brushed it off, writing off the sport immediately. Luckily, like my wrestling coach, she was persistent. The following fall semester, she continued asking. Finally, I said I would come watch a practice but she couldn’t ask again after that; sound familiar? So, reluctantly, I showed up to practice. What I saw blew me away: coed stunting, pyramids, tumbling, and more. I instantly became interested and eventually, my passion for wrestling had a rival in cheerleading. I didn’t initially have a place in a stunt group. Because of this, the responsibility of running the flag during games was placed on my shoulders. That seemingly mundane introduction to the sport led to the birth of 'Flag Guy.' The notoriety grew as my time running the flag continued, truly beginning when I showed up to Kairos, a campus ministry-run retreat, and I introduced myself to my roommate. Immediately, he said 'Wait, you’re Flag Guy!' That was the first time I was recognized for it and really where the persona began for me. The joy of running the flag grew as the student section began responding more to me. As I would run the flag, the students would cheer louder as I got closer and began waving the flag to celebrate the touchdown. Cheer has been such a blessing in my life. Flag Guy and cheering turned into something so special to me, helping me to become a cohesive part of BC and the spirit of our school. I made incredible connections with my teammates, medical and administrative staff, my coaches, and Boston College. From traveling to away football games to competing in Cheer Nationals in Daytona, the experiences I have had were life changing. This team has become my family and Boston College my home." - Brandon “Flag Guy” Bruttomesso '20 Photo: John Quackenbos, Boston College Athletics

“When we first started, it was just an idea. Grace had called me and mentioned, ‘Let's do a media brand,’ and she was explaining the concept to me, and I just said, ‘Alright, sure.’ I didn't know what was going to come out of it, I didn't know what to expect. I certainly didn't expect what we have now. I just wanted to provide people with a platform to be themselves, to say whatever it is they want to say, to express how they feel.” - Pamela Bailey ’22, co-founder of Vyntage, an online media platform for Gen-Z women of color | Read more: https://on.bc.edu/Vyntage

“What I’ve found is that, at the end of the day, if you have an idea and you really believe in something, you should always go for it. Growing up in Harlem, and being an immigrant myself, I didn't always see a lot of representation, particularly in the media, of the things that I was interested in. I always wanted to be able to tell stories, so I thought, okay, how can I incorporate all of my interests, and my love for wanting to empower people, to encourage us to look after ourselves, and my desire to build connections within my own community—how can I bring that to a platform that's going to reach a lot more people? That’s how Vyntage started.” - Grace Assogba ’22, co-founder of Vyntage, an online media platform for Gen-Z women of color | Read more: https://on.bc.edu/Vyntage

“We started thinking about making protective equipment, but we're really not set up for that, so we said,'Let’s make some signs and have the profits go to employees at small businesses.' We built a self-serve honor system kiosk, and people started loving it. It's become an activity for them to buy a sign and then drop it off on porches or in the mailboxes of the special people in their lives. Sometimes it's a nurse, sometimes it's a great friend, sometimes it’s a teacher. I think it's doing such a great job of teaching people compassion and giving and hope and helping. I have chills when I see nurses holding one of our signs, sharing the hope that people have brought to them. It’s truly amazing.” - Melanie O’Neil, a 2003 Boston College - Woods College of Advancing Studies graduate and founder of Rustic Marlin | Read More: https://on.bc.edu/SignofHope

“Uncertainty is something that's always present in our lives, but for the most part there's so much happening we don't pay attention to it. Now, uncertainty is very much in our faces, and that can cause a lot of stress and anxiety. When will this be over? When can I see my friends again? When will I get a job? The skills I live by and try to share with others who are struggling are the smaller-scale skills - trying to do little things that can have a big impact. What can I do today that's going to help me feel tended to? Maybe it’s laundry, maybe it’s Facetiming with friends. It’s not moving mountains, it’s just putting one foot in front of the other and having that be a mantra to drown out some of the anxiety we can't control.” - Angela Ficken, SSW ’05, psychotherapist and founder of Progress Wellness, LLC | Read more about how Angela manages stress: https://bit.ly/Ficken_ThriveGlobal

“My first single was released on April 3 and I had a bunch of shows lined up in New York, Boston, Philadelphia. Everything's been canceled. So obviously that's kind of a drag, but I'm in a big group chat with all my old Boston College friends and they'd been hearing about live concerts on Instagram. They said, ‘Nik you should do a live stream. We'd love to tune in,’ so I picked a date and decided to do a fundraiser for Meals On Wheels. In 90 minutes we raised almost $2,000.” - Nickolas Diamondidis '18, musician, More Than Matter | Read more: https://on.bc.edu/NickolasDiamondidis

"My new friends and passion for education, paired with my history major, drew me to India. The many history courses I took, as well as my work alongside Professor Arissa Oh on her book project, really exposed me to a lot of new ideas and history research more generally. I learned a lot about America in the world and its relationship with other countries that people don't talk about that much. I felt I had never properly been taught history, nor historical skills in my high school history classes; I gradually realized how much there was out there to learn. I spent part of the summer after my freshman year exploring Kolkata. I decided I wanted to try and learn an Indian dialect and more about India’s rich history. Visit after visit, I always came back to the U.S. a more productive citizen, more sensitized to my surroundings and so more capable of properly seeing my city, state, and nation around me. BC and the Atlantic Coast Conference enabled me to do this through various grants I received. I was able to stay in several homestays, and to conduct historical research in both Delhi and London. As interested as I am in India, I can’t emphasize enough that I understand my place in this world as an American. I am not going there with a desire to solve India's problems; there are far enough problems here (in the U.S.) that I am closer to, that I can relate to better, and that I can make a more immediate impact. I hope to come back and affect change locally, whether that results in being my becoming a teacher or working in public service. There are always opportunities to be better and I strive to be positive and grow from my experience no matter what is thrown at me. BC gave me every opportunity to really find what I am passionate about and I can’t be more thankful that I gave it another shot after a not-so great freshman year." - Colin Phelan ‘20, Fulbright-Nehru Scholarship winner, who will return to India after graduation

"Being a nurse through this unprecedented time has been humbling, heartbreaking, and beautiful in some surprising little ways. You really start to realize that the most important thing is just people. To be with them, to savor them, and to love them, especially when life feels super big and scary. Isolation has a way of telling us that of all things, we need each other the most." - Adelene Egan ED RN, Boston College Connell School of Nursing Class of 2018 Check out Adelene #facesofthefrontlines photo series: https://addieegan.wixsite.com/mysite

“Back when I was taking classes in epidemiology, it all felt really theoretical. Oftentimes, we were studying illnesses or diseases that affected people historically, or were continuing to affect people in low income countries. It felt disjointed from our reality. Now, it [COVID-19] is happening here; it's happening now; it's happening to me; it's happening to family, friends, and students. It creates a whole new meaning to what I studied - it feels a bit more real now - and I appreciate my training much more. I also appreciate the responsibility to make sure that I'm representing the science well and relaying information clearly so people can make choices that are good for their health.” - Nadia Abuelezam, epidemiologist and Boston College Connell School of Nursing Professor | Read more about Prof. Abuelezam: https://on.bc.edu/NadiaAbuelezam

“The band was completely different in those days. It’s so much more professional now. When I came to BC in 1958 it was a very small band. I would say 35 people. At orientation, they said, ‘Anybody that's interested in the band go over and see the director today.’ So I went over and I said, ‘What's the band all about?’ The director said, ‘Well, what size uniform do you wear?’ I said, ‘42 long,’ and the manager ran off and came back and said ‘Yeah, we’ve got one of those.’ The director said to me, ‘Well, do you have a clarinet?’ and I said yes. And he said, ‘Well bring it and a change of underwear tomorrow cause we’re leaving for West Point and we have a game on Saturday.’ I’ve been part of the band ever since.” - Sam Fardy ’62, member of Boston College Bands for 61 years | Read More: https://on.bc.edu/SamFardy