I asked some of my helpers to share the best songs they’ve listened to, and they came up with a pretty great playlist for you:

“A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell
“Lovely Day” by Bill Withers
“Crying in the Chapel” by the Orioles
“Marietta” by Upstate
“Wristwatch” by MJ Lenderman
“Cameo Lover” by Kimbra
“Supper’s Ready” by Genesis
“Knights in White Satin” by Giorgio Moroder
“Lab Jazz” by Trash Rabbit
“HOLLYWOOD” by Shoreline Mafia and YG
“Long Story Short” by Taylor Swift 
“Kick It To Me” or “Creo Lo Sientes” by Sammy Rae & The Friends 
“Garden Gate” by Mon Rovîa
“In My Life” by The Beatles
“Wichita Lineman” by Glen Campbell
“Hope in the Air” by Laura Marling
“Up the Wolves” by The Mountain Goats
“Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straits
“You Make No Sense” by ESG
“Sugar Shack” by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs
“Fly” by Wishy 
“Birdseed” by Merce Lemon
“Bright Smile” by Josh Ritter
“Losing You” by Solange
“Bright Eyes” by Art Garfunkel
“The Rainbow Connection” by Paul Williams

If you’re up for a challenge, there are 1200 miles of trails in the White Mountains (Map: bit.ly/white-mountains-map). I’d recommend the Falling Waters Trail, which passes three waterfalls on the way to incredible views in Franconia Notch. For something closer & less strenuous, I’d recommend Mt. Monadnock, where you can see for miles in every direction from the bare mountaintop. Here’s an online resource for finding hikes by region and difficulty: bit.ly/nh-hikes.

Depends on how wild you’re planning to go with toppings I’d think. Maybe try the vanilla as a base and make it about toppings. Or pick one of the stronger flavors and go solo. Enjoy!

A Greek salad & pizza. And out for ice cream. Yummy.

My crystal ball is out of commission. But I wish you luck!

We all overthink sometimes, which means following our own thoughts exclusively when we could be trying some other strategy to figure things out. Here are a few of many possible alternatives: 1. ask yourself what you’re feeling. If you’re not sure, here’s something to help you figure it out: bit.ly/wheel-emotion. 2. do something else for a few hours or days and come back to it. 3. phone a friend for a new perspective.

It’s a lovely thought, but we really don’t have the space. There are also some practical hygiene and safety concerns that would make it a bad idea for us. That said, students DO nap all over the library. Level 1 has lots of big chairs, and the booths by the vending machines also seem popular, particularly during exams.

James Cagney’s 1947 spy movie “13 Rue Madeleine” was partly filmed in O’Connell house, but most of the big Hollywood Boston movies tend to focus on places over the river. If you include inspirations, BC Nursing professor Ann Burgess was the model for the professor character in Netflix’s Mindhunter.

“Dystopia” and “not dark” is a rare combination! You may have to write it yourself. You’ll find some elements in the following: the short story “The Gondoliers” in Karen Russell’s Orange World (O’Neill Library PS3618.U755 A6 2019) probably comes the closest. Others with some shared elements: The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin (O’Neill Library, Course Reserves) and Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, by M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi (O’Neill Library PS3615.B75 E94 2022)

The question has many dimensions: does my life have value? Is human life significant? Does a life have virtue independent of one’s actions? Is there a purpose, divine or otherwise? I highly recommend reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning: bit.ly/bcl-frankl-meaning (ebook), in which he claims that the primary human drive is a search for meaning, not pleasure. He spent 4 years in Nazi concentration camps, so his claims about meaning are worth a listen.

Thanks ❤️

They’ve been taking awesomeness vitamins since they were knee-high to a duck.

My advice would be to let the name evolve from the campaign. One of my helpers told me about a party who specialized in really violent ambushes who came to call themselves The Rude Awakening. It made everything more epic to have the name come from specific memories.

Alas, I have no magic powers, but I do have helpers who make it possible for me to answer as many questions as I can. There’s a magic wall at CNN (bit.ly/magic-wall) that I might be related to, but I haven’t found proof of that yet.

Pearl is certainly transformative, but Hawthorne does such a remarkable job imbuing the child with the liveliness of an unfettered child that imagining her as a stone is difficult. And yet… Hawthorne had friends who’d read widely in Hindu and Buddhist works, and might have been familiar with Chintamani, a wish-giving jewel sometimes referred to as a pearl.

I don’t consume anything but Post-Its so I don’t have an opinion, but lots of my helpers are huge cheeseheads.

It’s quite different for different fields and careers. The best I can recommend in general is to a) pretend you’re the executive assistant to an early career person with great promise, so sending applications becomes a simple & efficient office task and b) make use of BC’s Career Center (bit.ly/BC-career) early and often.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (O’Neill Library, PS 1868 .A1) is certainly a classic worthy of reading and re-reading! I hesitate to apply labels like “best” to any art because there isn’t objective criteria for making that definitive a claim, but it’s certainly in a class of literature for which superlatives are regularly used.

Forgive me, but I’ve difficulty reading your letters. acus? acas? ucus? gcgs? gcus? acgs? I would be very grateful if you helped me solve the mystery.