Boston University

Boston University is the college Ella plans to attend after completing high school, a goal that makes her wish for an independent life concrete. It first represents a future she has prepared for and saved toward; after her forced move and the upheavals that follow, it becomes a lost opportunity rather than an available destination.

Ella’s Original Plan

Before moving to California, Ella intended to remain in Boston, complete the high-school graduation requirements she had missed through online study, and begin at Boston University when she was ready. At eighteen, she had saved enough money to pay for college. Her mother had deposited the monthly checks Ella’s father sent into an account, and the accumulated savings could cover her education. Ella regarded this financial preparation as evidence that she could manage on her own, not as a reason to depend on her father.

The plan belonged to a modest life Ella had shared with her mother. She did not feel that she needed her father’s money or the affluent household he offered after the move. Her college ambition therefore carried two meanings: Boston University was an educational goal, and remaining in Boston was part of her attempt to preserve control over where and how she lived.

The Plan Changes

Ella’s intended route to Boston University was interrupted after a suicide attempt during a prolonged, painful rehabilitation. She had already spent three months in the hospital, undergone seventeen operations, and been told she might never walk again. After the attempt, her father no longer believed she could safely make decisions alone. Although Ella was eighteen and had sufficient savings, he had her declared mentally unstable through the courts and compelled her to move from Boston to California.

Later, when Ella discussed the possibility of living independently with Dr. Parish, she said she had lost her place at Boston University. Returning to Boston no longer seemed like a simple restoration of her former life: she had lost contact with her old friends, and she expected that nothing would be as it had been. The college remains part of the future she had once planned, but the available evidence does not establish that she subsequently attends it.

Education and Self-Determination

When asked what she would do if she could leave her father’s home, Ella describes a revised plan. She would finish high school through an online program, which might allow her to graduate in a few months instead of repeating the entire final year, then go to college. She hopes to study journalism and become a writer or literary critic, and considers universities in New York or elsewhere on the East Coast more suitable to those ambitions. Boston University is thus a specific lost placement within a broader educational aspiration that Ella continues to articulate.

The contrast between the plan and its interruption illuminates the conflict at the center of Ella’s circumstances. She is rebuilding mobility after severe injuries, yet her father’s legal control also limits her ability to choose where to live and study. Her later request that her father’s guardianship be lifted when she is ready to leave the clinic makes explicit what the Boston plan had already implied: for Ella, education is bound up with being trusted to make decisions about her own future.