Advice to incoming students: get to know the area

It’s time to get to the more fun stuff as we continue to dish out advice to incoming students. Knowing your resources and digging into the curriculum are all well and good, but those sound suspiciously like work. Summer is coming, after all, so let’s relax a bit!

If you’re new to the greater Boston area, the northeastern US, or the US as a whole, these next few months afford a great opportunity to learn a bit more about your adopted hometown of the next few years. If you have the opportunity, planning a visit sometime over the summer is a good chance to explore the Tufts campus without so much of the hectic day-to-day going on. You can also get oriented to the neighborhoods around campus, get some on-the-ground intel if you’re looking for housing, and do some dry runs on public transportation to familiarize yourself with the local options. Depending when you visit, you might even be able to help inaugurate the new Medford/Tufts stop on the Green Line, the actual, basically-confirmed-but-still-don’t-hold-your-breath opening of which is the local equivalent of capturing the elusive jaguar shark on camera.

If your schedule permits, you can easily fill up a few days in the area with some loosely-organized wandering around. One of the metro Boston area’s many great qualities is its walkability: you’ve got self-guided historical tours, fine arts options galore (some more fine than others), and loads of good eating. If, like me, you’re trying to figure out why the Celtics can’t seem to keep their handle or stop turning the ball over even though let’s be honest this is a winnable series, consider heading over to TD Garden to examine the famed parquet floor for signs of warping.

It’s of course understandable that not everyone will be able to make a separate trip to the area before arriving in the fall (though at a minimum it’s advisable to arrive a few days in advance of the start of Orientation). There are still plenty of ways to get to know the area virtually including national, regional, and local news sites as well as commercial, nightlife, and tourism guides.

However you choose to do it, learning more about the area now will pay dividends when you arrive!