Ottiger Provides Connection Through Eagles Abroad

By KaTe NueChTerleiN Heights Staff

When Jake Ottiger and his friends received their study abroad program acceptances this February, they rushed to figure out which other Boston College students would attend the same programs as them. Once Ottiger noticed there was no simple way to access that information, he decided to build one.

“I’m going abroad to Singapore, and I just noticed a lot of people were talking about it [through] word of mouth, figuring out where people are going from the different programs,” Ottiger, CSOM ’25, said. “I was kind of bummed that I couldn’t see where everyone else was going. I heard that we were going to have an orientation meeting at some point, but I was kind of impatient.”

So on Feb. 23, Ottiger published his website, Eagles Abroad. The site enables BC students who are studying abroad to view other class members enlisted in their schools. Once Ottiger verifies that the student goes to BC and was accepted to a study abroad program, they can click on any BC abroad program, view the list of future attendees, and access their emails to reach out and form connections.

“It’s just a way to make sure BC students feel comfortable going abroad,” Ottiger said.

As a finance and computer science double major, Ottiger said he taught himself to code during his freshman year at BC.

“I actually came into college thinking I wanted to do investment banking and stuff, and then that quickly changed,” Ottiger said. “I’d say I started really heavily focusing on the computer science stuff in November 2022, and then just kind of ran with it.”

While Ottiger has only taken a few computer science courses so far, he said his Computer Science II course with former BC professor Rafael Ubal Tena sparked his interest in web design.

Ottiger also said he is loosely involved in BC’s competitive programming club and is a part of the BC Computer Science Society.

When programming, Ottiger said he has learned to problem solve and utilize any available information.

“The most important thing is just being able to figure stuff out,” Ottiger said. “So like, go to Google, ChatGPT, whatever—use the resources that you have, be resourceful, and figure out how to do it.”

Ottiger said he worked as a software engineer intern at the startup RiskAverse last summer, but he emphasized that internship experience was not essential to creating his website.

“It wasn’t like I had any super strong past experience that led me to be able to do this all, you know,” he said. “It was just kind of being curious and following wherever that took me.”

Crediting a past backpacking trip where he journeyed through Europe, Ottiger said he believes travel is crucial to character growth. Yet, unfamiliarity with foreign locations often deters students from studying abroad, he said.

“I think the main thing I’ve noticed in talking to people about traveling to foreign countries is that sometimes it can be scary or isolating if you’re going on your own or in a smaller program,” he said. “So I kind of wanted to help ease that process because like I said before, I think travel is extremely important.”

Rev. James Keenan, S.J., vice provost for global engagement, said the Office of Global Education (OGE) encourages students to apply to more geographically diverse programs.

“I’m interested in a BC student body that is really global and not just European,” Keenan said.

Because convincing students to study in non-European programs is difficult, Keenan said Eagles Abroad serves as a great step in the right direction.

“One of the things that we’ve been trying to do is make students more and more informed about their choices,” he said. “And in a similar way, Jake is making it helpful for people who are going to different places to know who else is going there. And my thing is—any bridge building like this makes for better travel.”

About a week or two after OGE released abroad decisions, Ottiger began developing the idea behind Eagles Abroad. After building the site in just one weekend, Ottiger said he posted a link to the new website on Herrd, BC’s anonymous social media platform. Although his Herrd post gained some support, Ottiger said he also received some initial backlash.

“I had to follow up on the Herrd post because someone said, like, ‘Oh, they’re probably taking data or something,’” he said. “And I was like, ‘No guys, I’m not doing anything with your data.’”

Once about 200 students had registered for Eagles Abroad, Ottiger sent a message in the BC Class of 2025 GroupMe, a group chat where students in the same year at BC can send messages to each other, to further spread the word.

“I just said, ‘Hey guys, made this website to connect kids that are going abroad, there’s like 200 people that are already on there,” he said. “And then that just skyrocketed growth.”

Aside from posting on social media, Ottiger said he tried to avoid promoting the website too aggressively.

“I didn’t want to be the guy that’s like, you know, slipping stuff under people’s dorm doors and stuff like that,” he said.

Ottiger’s strategy paid off—the site has already reached over 71,000 views across at least 3,000 unique devices, he said. Ottiger said that of the estimated 800 BC students who go abroad each year, 570 have registered to use the site and approximately 470 have verified their study abroad placements and are now listed under their respective program.

“It’s pretty crazy because again, I was not expecting it to like, blow up or whatever,” Ottiger said. “I wasn’t doing it for the clout. It’s just pretty cool that people are using it and hopefully it eases the study abroad process.”

The site’s popularity has also instigated some unusual run-ins on campus, Ottiger said.

“Two people came up to me in the Addie’s line, and were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I love the website,’ which is pretty cool,” he said. “I think at something in Vandy or Ruby, some people were like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s the website guy,’ which is really weird because it’s like, I don’t know, I just like building stuff and connecting people.”

Before he was getting recognized as the “website guy” on campus, Ottiger was a student in Charles Wiseman’s

Computer Systems course. According to Wiseman, Ottiger always displayed an excellent grasp of the material.

“Jake was a phenomenal student,” Wiseman said. “He worked on several different projects and did well on all of them. He’s a top notch programmer, a top notch engineer.”

Now, Ottiger works as a teaching assistant for Wiseman’s Computer Science I course, where Wiseman said he also excels.

“Jake is just an easy guy to get along with,” Wiseman said. “He’s the kind of person I think that others feel comfortable coming to either ask for help or if someone has an idea, you know, they might come to him because I think they know that he’ll treat them with respect and give their idea a fair shot.”

Although Ottiger did inform a couple friends and professors about his project, Eagles Abroad was primarily a solo mission. Wiseman said he simply served as Ottiger’s cheerleader throughout the process.

“This is 100 percent his thing, from beginning to end, and I’m really happy that I’ve been able to watch him as he goes through it,” Wiseman said.

Ottiger did not seek any assistance from OGE either, according to Keenan.

“He did the whole project and told us all afterwards,” Keenan said.

This solo process of actually constructing Eagles Abroad was pretty seamless, Ottiger said.

“A lot of it is just like, going to Google or ChatGPT now, and figuring out how to do stuff,” Ottiger said. “The running joke is software engineers are like, really good at being able to Google things and find the answer to a problem.”

New developments from OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research laboratory that includes softwares like ChatGPT and GPT-4, helped synthesize much of the information needed for the site, Ottiger said. In particular, he used the softwares to help generate facts about all 180 abroad programs that BC offers.

“I think BC does a really good job of having a lot of info, so I was just formatting it in a different way,” Ottiger said.

While many undergraduates may balk at the idea of creating a website

In my head, I used to imagine that the girl who journals is the girl who has everything figured out. She wakes up early to meticulously jot down to-do lists. Each page of her leather-bound notebook is dotted with delicately scribbled flowers and headings written with perfect penmanship. As much as I have always wanted to be this girl, she simply isn’t me.

Anyone who knows me would tell you that organization is certainly not absent from my life. But despite my incredibly intentional habits, my thoughts are a jumbled, never-ending stream of chaotic consciousness. And so too is my writing process.

Most of my writing starts out as a confusing list of sentences and key words. I then make an outline, inserting bits and pieces of the list into each paragraph before adding additional prose. I edit draft after draft written in this fashion until I am able to finally articulate my point exactly as I imagined. Although my writing may start out as a collision of seemingly disconnected ideas, the editing process allows me to meticulously arrange my thoughts into a cohesive piece that reflects the order I try to maintain in my life.

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So, you might expect someone who puts such time and effort into their words to jump at the opportunity to journal. But it just never came naturally to me and, even after trying for years on end, I could never figure out why.

Now, I have finally realized the problem wasn’t that I had nothing to write about. It was that I compared myself to prolific writers, even in my personal work. The whole idea behind journaling, at least in my understanding, is that it’s supposed to create an environment free from expectations. A journal entry is like the first draft of an essay that never gets edited. The idea of leaving my thoughts in their pure, unfiltered initial state seemed so foreign to me.

And yet, despite my inability to commit to journaling in the past, I decided I would try again this year. So, on Jan. 1, 2023, I picked up the notebook that had sat blank in my bedroom for nearly a year and started writing about anything and everything that came to mind. I set no expectations, had no rules, and made no plans for how to tweak my words to convey some perfectly crafted message.

Journaling, once the pressure of perfection was off, came with a sense of security—nobody would have the ability to judge my thoughts. As my pen danced freely across the page, I realized that my entries didn’t have to be written like novels. They were simply a place to displace my thoughts to paper, hoping to gain clarity. Unlike essays or opinion columns, I was the only person who could judge my own writing. In realizing this, I began to learn how to be less critical of myself. I knew I could write an introspective examination of my future goals or a list of words I find beautiful and it would make no difference to anyone but me. I gave myself the freedom to write anything I wanted, and I loved it.

I’m not saying that journaling has become a daily habit, but I now know that it is always there when I need to step away from my seemingly endless list of assignments. Journaling has helped me find freedom in writing and limit the rules I place on myself. So, as sappy as this pitch might sound, I encourage everyone to try writing—even just a few sentences about a lingering fear or something that fills you with joy. Give it a chance and see if it helps you better understand yourself.

If you decide to take my recommendation, I suggest you take a step back from your typical world and give yourself the space to be free from distractions. Go get a cup of tea, queue up your favorite Gracie Abrams song, and put pen to paper. Empty the thoughts that plague your mind. Write about your deepest desires and delusions. Sometimes writing out your thoughts makes you more attuned to the ones you’ve been ignoring.