Rabbit Hole at Merrick Theatre and Center for the Arts

This story is part of a series focusing on Suffolk students' first-yr experience. Keep reading this story below and cheque back for more.

Suffolk student Hunter poses for a portrait by the Zakim Bridge in Boston.

Your City: Boston

Boston is much more a ZIP lawmaking. It'south where you will live, chief your fields of study, pursue career-making internships, and detect inspiration all around.

Suffolk student Mohammed poses for a portrait in the North End of Boston.

Your Global Gateway

What practise you lot say to a culture-packed spring break in Spain? If y'all answered, "¡Si, por favor!" stamp your academic passport on this weeklong trip.

Suffolk student Morgan performs with the Rampage Show Choir.

Your Life on Campus

Get ready to hear "Get involved." A lot. Joining our pupil organizations actually is the all-time mode to connect with cool peers, and become the leader you're meant to exist.

Providing the Best Experience

Suffolk professor Amy Monticello instructing a class.

Of course, the ability to focus your attention is more a weeklong challenge. It'south an essential aspect of being a successful college student. And that concept of preparing Suffolk'southward newest Rams enriches every first-year seminar, regardless of the course proper noun and the instructor's academic field.

The hook? Intellectual curiosity and sheer excitement—both of which positively radiate from Associate Professor of English language Amy Monticello, who directs the FYS Program.

"What is the best experience y'all have at college?" she asks. "Information technology's the minor room where everyone is super into the topic, the work of that form. And y'all're doing a deep dive into something cool that everybody has decided they desire to study. It'southward a self-selected thing."

What students learn in these seminars sets the stage for the three years that follow. "You lot can run across students' unabridged trajectories in some cases," Monticello notes, "which is ane of the joys and enormous privileges of instruction first-yr students."

Her seminar, In the Beginning Person: 21st-Century Storytelling, attracts students looking to polish their narrative skills. Monticello encourages her students to experiment with diverse media—including podcasts and Google Maps—to tell stories in fresh ways. Week past calendar week, she helps them get their bearings in the form content—and higher in general.

Planning for Life

Suffolk student Nico poses for a portrait on Tremont Street in Boston.

Monticello's seminar defenseless Nico Miele'southward centre. While this Class of 2024 psychology major was excited to improve his abilities to think critically and evaluate readings, he didn't look all the life hacks he gained in class.

For Nico, his seminar was his introduction to stories that break free from the written word. After listening to podcasts, he recorded his own oral narrative. He also learned to decode a visual narrative, following the flow of photographs to watch a story unfold.

"The class helped me branch out and endeavor something I was unsure about," he says. "I was nervous about both of them considering I'd never done annihilation similar information technology, but they were both corking."

Thanks to a reflection newspaper on fourth dimension management, Nico'due south learning how to organize his fourth dimension at Suffolk amend, too. For a week, he recorded how he spent his hours on everything—naps, video games, chatting with his roommates and teammates, and waiting until iii a.one thousand. to sleep.

"It's stuff that'southward just nature to you," he admits, "but once yous're looking at information technology and building a reflection off of it, information technology helped me with stuff that I could piece of work on."

Suffolk student Nico exercises in a group class held on Roemer Plaza.

So, what tin he piece of work on? "Apparently information technology's not going to happen immediately, but it'southward something to help me slowly move my way into going to bed earlier, peradventure cut out the naps, more homework time. If I'm playing three hours of Xbox, do like 30 minutes and work on chore applications."

Perhaps virtually importantly, information technology's demystified the concept of being a Suffolk student and given him a sense of connexion to the Academy at large.

"Professor Monticello is i of the best teachers I've ever had throughout my instruction," Nico says. "She made united states feel comfortable. She wasn't a professor talking down to students below her. At that place was a connexion between us and her—like normal people talking."

And by sharing her insights on which campus resources to visit when, she showed Nico and his classmates how to get the near out of their first semester and every semester afterward. "Professor Monticello is and then nice and wants all of her students to succeed. She is going to make it possible for you to succeed, every bit long every bit you put the work in."

His first-year seminar'southward fabricated quite the impression. "It's going to assist non but now, but for the balance of my life," he says.

Chasing Her Professional person Dream

Suffolk student Christine poses for a portrait outside the Sawyer Building.

Christine Sloss knows what she wants out of life.

She's known since her childhood in Marblehead, Massachusetts, when her parents borrowed free passes from the local library to whisk her to the exotic worlds contained in the Peabody Essex Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Her AP Art History class in loftier school further illuminated her ideal career path.

"The dream is to one day run the charitable foundation associated with a museum," she says, "to make museums more accessible to the public and equitable."

Christine, Class of 2023, constitute just the right class to indulge her bookish passion and really connect with Suffolk. Curators, Collections & Exhibits, a first-year seminar taught by Associate Professor of Biology Eric Dewar, practically leaped out of the class itemize at her.

"Going into college, I think people are nervous that all your classes are going to be x-page papers due every night with annotated bibliographies," she says. "This class was a really fun fashion to start my college career. We went to run into all these crazy, amazing museums all around Boston with a professor who made it a not bad course that was really engaging."

And on the rare day that the class wasn't exploring the collections at the Boston Athenaeum, African Coming together Business firm, Harrison Gray Otis House, and other institutions, Christine and her classmates unwound with a spin on the Rose Kennedy Greenway'due south carousel.

For her final form assignment, Christine curated an exhibit on dorm plants—specifically, the office her fellow plant-owners play every bit city dwellers cultivating a new historic period of environmentalism in their residence hall rooms. She then presented her project at Suffolk'due south honors symposium.

Planting the Seeds of Academic Success

Suffolk student Christine poses for a picture with a group of friends on Roemer Plaza.

A lot has changed since Christine's get-go semester. Subsequently starting off in the College of Arts & Sciences equally a political scientific discipline major, she's now studying business administration in the Sawyer Business School, with a nonprofit administration minor and a paralegal studies certificate to boot.

Only her ambition to work in museums nonetheless burns brilliant. Her dorm plants—a fiddle-leaf fig, two jade plants, and a fast-growing beanstalk (species unknown)—continue to flourish, as does her strong bail with her faculty mentor.

"I got to meet my professor equally a person who was also excited about this topic," she says. "Take the classes that you are passionate near and tell your professor y'all're passionate near them. I think that was the all-time matter I did literally afterwards my starting time class with Professor Dewar."

Innovators Welcome

Suffolk professor George Moker discussing a topic with a student.

While the Kickoff-Year Seminar is required for all Higher of Arts & Sciences students, new students in both the Sawyer Business organization School and the College must take a Creativity & Innovation (CI) course. Like FYS courses, these CI classes are non your boilerplate lectures—and that'south very much by design.

"We need to employ new techniques in trouble-solving to really deal with a lot of global bug," says George Moker, whose many Academy titles include co-chair of the Creativity & Innovation Steering Committee. "Information technology'southward no longer about quondam-fashioned strategy. It'southward no longer about old ways of thinking. It's about taking the creative approach and using that to notice unique and useful solutions."

Think creativity is just for artists? Think again. "Creativity is across all thought processes," Moker notes, and Suffolk's academic itemize backs him up.

Incoming Rams have their option of CI courses ranging from Think Small: Change the World, Chemistry Is Everywhere, and the Entrepreneur'southward Cocktail to Inventing for Not-Engineers, The End of Global Poverty, and Solutions for Sustainability (the last two of which Moker teaches). In that location are dozens more than.

No affair which class they choose, students tackle big-picture themes in teams, collaborating with their peers beyond the Academy on out-of-the-box projects. "The more unique, the more useful—the improve you do on a grade, which is done through polling," Moker says. "It'south non about the grade; it's about being artistic."

It'south as well about being okay with the occasional failure—a concept broiled into the creative procedure. Every CI course encourages students to adapt and revise their projects and thinking on the style to truly new insights.

"There are going to be two–4 million people graduating the same month equally you lot," Moker tells his students. "What's going to make you lot stand out of that crowd? That'due south going to exist your ability to solve issues."

Finding Her Excitement

Suffolk student Morgan poses for a portrait on Boston Common.

Morgan Mitcheson knew she had a problem the first semester of her start year: the academic major she'd declared as a brand-new Ram.

"It was interesting, but it wasn't crazy interesting," she says. "I learned a lot, but it just didn't feel right for me."

Her CI course—Dreams, Demons & Dynamic Artists' Creative Nature—was some other story. "I was ridiculously excited for it," Morgan, Form of 2023, says, "even though it was at 10 a.m. on Fridays and 2 hours and 40 minutes long."

Taught by psychology instructor Nichole Vatcher, the course explores dream theories, mental illnesses, the works of artists like Vincent van Gogh and Yayoi Kusama, and how different factors bear on and influence art and individuals. The goal is to help students activate their own creative nature and see their world in new ways.

"We never did one essay in that course," Morgan says. Instead, she kept a dream periodical, created a mock 'failure resume' and gave a presentation on what she learned from it, and visited Boston's Establish of Gimmicky Fine art to step into Kusama's mesmerizing infinity mirror rooms.

For their concluding project, she and her groupmates produced an animated newscast on multi-level marketing campaigns (remember Mary Kay and those shakes that promise to melt body fat) and how they influence individuals.

Meant to Exist

Suffolk student Morgan sits with friends in the One Court Street residence hall.

Morgan's psychology-based CI course inspired a major breakthrough. "This is what I'one thousand interested in," she remembers realizing. "This is where I'm meant to be."

Her next thought was, "Okay, perchance I demand to accept more classes similar to this." Ane trip to the Undergraduate Academic Advising Center later, Morgan was officially a psychology major.

However, veering off her original academic path felt similar a personal failure. "Perfectionism brain going on," she explains. "Merely switching majors showed me it'southward okay not to selection the right thing initially."

Actually, information technology's more than okay—it's normal, as Morgan can tell you now.

These days, you'll observe her conducting research in Suffolk'due south CHOICES Youth Psychopathology and Handling Lab, an opportunity that's preparing her for graduate school and achieving her goal of condign a clinical psychologist.

She might also look familiar, since she'due south an Orientation Team Leader, welcoming new Suffolk students and helping them find what excites them on campus and in Boston.

Information technology'southward a position Morgan loves—and one that she secured thank you to her CI professor's glowing recommendation letter.

Liberty of Thought

Suffolk student Chloe sits at her laptop on the Esplanade in Boston.

"This one sounds cool," thought Chloe Beaulieu, when she came across Solutions for Sustainability the summer before her first year. "I didn't really know exactly what information technology was going to be almost going into it, but it seemed similar a topic I'd be interested in."

With the assigned text Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques at her side, she soon institute out what CI is all nigh. Moker challenged Chloe'due south class to consider the problem of waste on campus—particularly the use of nonbiodegradable plastics—and codify a new, applied way to address it. Drawing on a word-association web for inspiration, Chloe, Course of 2023, and her grouping championed the concept of a cup that could be reused a certain number of times before its owner gets a free java on campus.

"We all put our heads together and pulled everyone's different backgrounds and ideas into the solution," Chloe says. "Maybe not everyone in the grouping originally idea that was going to be our solution, just we connected on it."

But whatever they came up with, Chloe felt empowered by Moker to attempt and try over again. "He didn't make information technology similar, 'You lot accept to be artistic in this way or that way,'" she says. "At that place wasn't really that fear of, 'Oh no! I'm taking this really interesting class well-nigh inventiveness, simply I don't know how to be creative. I'm going to fail.'

"You weren't concerned about declining," she continues; "you were more than focused on 'How can I just practise my best to push myself and work with my group to create a adept solution?'"

Discovering Her Leadership Manner

Suffolk student Chloe talks with two friends in Faneuil Hall.

CI courses immerse students in group projects, sparking bookish collaborations as well as new insights on the personal level.

Chloe learned a lot from all that teamwork—not but about sustainability, merely about herself. "You learn listening, and you acquire leadership," she says, "and you lot have to apply those skills hand-in-hand to have a really successful feel in your classes and with your peers." She also points out that your groupmates might show upward in your future classes—and even your time to come workplace—then information technology's wise to learn how to work finer with them.

"I'm more of a participatory leader," Chloe says of her own leadership style. "I like to be part of the action and have everyone working together, which tin can exist difficult, but that collaboration is important to me."

The Foundation for Time to come Success

Suffolk student Chloe poses for a portrait in downtown Boston.

Chloe likewise gained key takeaways from the 1-credit courses all first-year Business Schoolhouse students are required to take: SBS 100 careerSTART and SBS 200 careerEXPLORE, along with presentation-focused SBS 101 Business Foundations, and an intro to marketing.

"They're some of the most important classes I've taken at Suffolk," she says, "because you start edifice yourself as a professional. They teach you how to showcase yourself, apply your knowledge, and network yourself to employers. Making my LinkedIn profile in SBS 100—that was super-important! At present I become on LinkedIn every day and notice internships."

A marketing major with a minor in production innovation and brand marketing, Chloe'due south already completed an internship doing marketing and public relations for Art Resources Collaborative for Kids (ARCK Boston).

"Boston has a lot of great opportunities, and I go on looking for those," she says. "I want to work for a firm where I can work as office of a team, creating really meaningful promotions."

Now, advertizement agency Colina Holliday is on Chloe's internship wish list. And given her strong concern foundation, she's well-prepared to get her wish.

A Matter of Facts

Suffolk student Grace poses for a photo in the North End of Boston.

Even if y'all recollect you lot know all the answers, at that place's always room for new possibilities. That's why the first-year experience at Suffolk is specifically designed to let you accept new directions, explore surprising opportunities, and run into where your interests take you.

Just ask Grace Laverriere, who questions everything. She has to, if she wants to lead her dream career in broadcast journalism.

When she saw a first-year seminar called What is a Fact? she knew she had to accept it. It quickly cleared upward whatsoever questions she had about academics at Suffolk.

"I can't say enough well-nigh Nicholas Frangipane," Grace, Class of 2023, says. "I was very nervous going in because I wasn't sure if the seminar was going to be very much lecture-based. Just it was the students and professor working together. The collaboration was actually dainty, and there were a lot of discussions."

Grace found the class so inspiring, she added another fact to her academic transcript: a minor in English.

She institute fifty-fifty more than inspiration in another first-year requirement.

Flipping the Narrative

Suffolk student Grace looks at the camera while taking notes in class.

Just as every Sawyer Business School student takes Business Foundations, their College of Arts & Sciences peers must take Strategies for Success, usually known as CAS 101.

Grace didn't just laissez passer this course. She excelled at it.

"It was honestly so much fun," she says. "Information technology was a lot of presentations and speeches—not just about our major, only also impromptu speeches so we could get some practice speaking on our feet and just keeping the three minutes full of information," she says.

Suffolk student Grace presents her research topic.

Her poise caught the attention of a teaching assistant, who encouraged Grace to apply to get a CAS 101 TA herself for fall 2020. With a recommendation from Frangipane, she landed the position.

"I was a little self-witting considering I was like, 'I'm simply one year older than these people,' she says. "'Then will they meet me as a peer or as a mentor?'"

Grace'due south nervousness soon disappeared, and she continued on camera with her students via Zoom. It turns out she had a lot to offer them as a mentor and a peer who'd been in their shoes simply a year before. When she had the chance to lead the class, Grace organized a student interest panel, and invited her friends to present to her first-twelvemonth students about their campus organizations.

Through this leadership office, she gained even greater confidence in her own speaking skills and on-camera presence.

"I had to articulate things that they had to learn in a way that they would empathize," she says. "It couldn't just be me rambling for thirty minutes. Information technology had to actually be something that they could sympathize and take notes on or enquire questions about. I learned a lot about myself."

New Horizons

Suffolk student Grace poses for a photo on Washington Street in downtown Boston.

Grace withal cherishes her dream of being a journalist, but now she tin imagine a new time to come for herself equally an educator in her own classroom.

The fact is, thanks to her Suffolk career so far, she's more than ready to ponder multiple career paths and define success on her own terms. And that'south what the first-twelvemonth experience hither is all about.