Finding Community in the Combined Degree
As a tour guide at SMFA, I'm often asked, "What's your favorite thing about Tufts?"
There's a lot to love. We have an interdisciplinary curriculum, fantastic academic resources, tons of extracurriculars, and much more. Still, what always stands out to me is the people. As a Combined Degree student, my community spans two campuses and two degrees, and that's really enriched my experience.
Tufts is filled with the friendliest, kindest people, and the best part of being here has been spending time with people as excited about the same things as me. Sometimes, that takes the form of working in the studio at SMFA with friends and learning different techniques from each other. Other times that means I'm working on personal projects designing websites or products with friends who are also studying engineering psychology and human factors engineering.
But I didn't just magically appear at Tufts with a group of friends. Like everyone else, I was anxious about making friends and finding my place within Tufts' community during my freshman year. Talking to a ridiculous number of people during Pre-Orientation and Orientation Week, joining clubs, and chatting with classmates helped me meet some awesome people.
My Pre-Orientation was CREATE (Cultivate Relationships by Engaging with Arts at Tufts Experiences). It involved traveling around Boston and visiting art museums and institutions. I actually made my first friend at Tufts through CREATE—all because I chatted with someone sitting next to me while on the train back to Medford. During the rest of orientation, I made many more friends with whom I'm still very close a year and a half later.
As classes started, many clubs started having General Interest Meetings (often called GIMs). I ended up in a GIM for a club called Project Linus, a charity organization that makes blankets for children in need. Since then, I have spent one hour every week making blankets and catching up with the other members. Project Linus is a straightforward, laid-back club, but it quickly became one of my favorite parts of the week. Through it, I made some great friends and got a ton of helpful advice from upperclassmen—from classes to take to campus events to go to. Moreover, I found a space where I felt completely comfortable and included. It was the first moment of many that made Tufts begin to feel like my community, like home.
My classes provided more moments like that. I've had fun and learned a lot through many classes at Tufts. Still, my best choice as a student here was to take Introduction to Computer Science (CS11) and 3D Foundations during my freshman fall semester.
CS11 was easily the best class community I've experienced in my life, and through it, I became close with most of my current friends at Tufts. The class is set up with an army of teaching assistants (TAs), usually undergraduate students majoring in computer science. They're great resources for help with homework, reviewing concepts from lectures, and recommendations for classes to take for professors to talk to based on what you’re interested in. Most students will tell you that they practically lived in the TAs’ office hours during that class, and I am no exception. I had never programmed before, so I struggled a lot and had to ask a ton of questions. However, as a result, I ended up befriending some of my TAs and the other students who were with me during office hours.
Through 3D Foundations, I met more SMFA students and became immersed in SMFA’s tight-knit creative community. 3D Foundations is an introductory sculpture class with three modules; you learn mold-making and casting, welding, and woodworking. It changes professors for each module, but students stay with the same small group of peers. I loved that small size because it meant I got to know everyone in my group and my professors. More importantly, I was introduced to SMFA's wood-shop. Some of my freshman year's best moments were spending time there, chatting with studio monitors, and carving sculptures and bowls with friends. Despite having virtually no experience in sculpture before coming to SMFA, woodworking has become a beloved part of my practice, and the wood-shop is a cherished part of my day and community.
You may be a freshman, or maybe you're thinking about coming to Tufts. If you want to find your community here, I implore you to talk to the person sitting next to you, take a class in something you've never done before, and learn as much as possible from the people around you. Join a club or go out of your way to talk to someone during orientation week; Tufts' community is amazing, so make the most of it.