Meet Connor Lenahan: BU’s unbreakable junior

Connor Lenahan radiates optimism. The Scranton native is a junior studying Film and Television in COM and is heavily involved on campus.

He works in Student Activities as an events consultant and is a public address announcer for BU sports. He also has a well-read blog and, oh, did I mention he has a weekly podcast too? Yeah, he pretty much does it all.

Connor has broken eleven bones due to a condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta. His blog, Unbreakable, started as a project on January 1st of 2014 when he decided to develop his writing skills by challenging himself to write about something different every day.

The blog is updated daily and covers “sports, pop culture and different random stuff”.

The Tab sat down with Connor to try and find out a little bit more about him.

Can you tell me a little more about your blog?

I broke my tibia and fibula back in June of 2013 so I was stuck at home with nothing to do, so I started posting on Unbreakable, and I posted something like 20 articles that year. Then I decided that I was going to keep going with it until January 1st 2014 and then I wanted to see if I could post every day.

How’d your blog come about?

I started it this summer back in July. My girlfriend and I went out and bought a microphone and ever since I’ve just turned my dorm into a recording studio. We bring people in and we’ve elected that we want it to be as unprepared as possible. We do one closing segment where we have to touch on something in movies, music, sports and TV but other than that I just will literally bring my friends or somebody in and have a conversation with them.

Do you have an idea of what you want to do in the future?

I’m really good at acting – like I know what I’m doing – but on the inside I’m like “oh god oh god oh god”. I’m studying Film and TV in COM because when I was growing up I was fascinated and in love with movies like any kid and I’m especially interested in television because my favorite show growing up was The Simpsons, which has been on for 27 seasons. In fact, I go to sleep with The Simpsons playing every single night, because I’ve seen every episode something like 20 times. Which is ridiculous, but it’s rich text if you want to be able to work with something where there’s no other show on television that has that deep of a history where you can keep learning new things.

BU gets a lot of snow and slush, as I’m sure you know. Have you had any difficulties getting around? 

Oh, very much so. This answer two years ago wouldn’t be as interesting as it is now, but this past winter we had the Juno blizzard. I can normally handle snow pretty well. The chair itself is pretty durable, and if we get a couple inches of snow they clear it pretty well. If there’s more than four inches of snow I can’t get through it because the front wheels will get stopped.

This past winter I ended up having to drop two classes. One, because the loading dock behind CAS is the only way to get in the building and I was incapable of going down the ramp and getting to class in the first place. The other one had a class policy of two missed classes and you have to drop the class, and I had missed around seven, most if not all were because of the snow. The good news is, for the most part as long as we don’t have Juno in the winter, I’m pretty good about getting around.

How is getting around BU in general?

It’s fine, actually. The condition that I have, it’s safer for me to be in the chair rather than walking and the chair allows me to move faster. I’d get bumped into and break something almost immediately if I was walking. I peddle with my feet and also use my arms, and I can do multiple miles a day in the chair.

Somebody in Kenmore Square parked a pickup truck right over the handicap ramp. I had to go around and get out of my wheelchair and lift my chair onto the curb, which isn’t that hard to do but I turned around and said “move your car” and someone in the backseat rolled the window down and started yelling at me and cursing at me and things like that. And I was just like really? In public, you’re illegally parked in front of a cop and you’re going to yell at a kid in a wheelchair? But aside from that one incident, everyone has been really helpful and the university itself has been terrific and my girlfriend especially.

What’s the craziest thing that’s happened to you on campus? 

I actually got my wheelchair stolen freshman year.

Why would anyone steal a wheelchair?

On Marathon Monday, I was hanging out at a friend’s place. And me, being overly trusting, parked my wheelchair outside thinking that nobody was going to touch it. It’s a residential area and you have to go out of your way to get there and people tend to recognize me with the chair.

I’m inside hanging out with my friends from the basketball team and my friend and I were leaving and someone I had just met that day told me my wheelchair wasn’t outside. We go outside and there’s no wheelchair to be found.

My friend and this kid I had just met walked me back to Warren and I used my backup wheelchair, filed a report with the BU police and the next morning I filed a report with the Boston Police Department just in case. I called my parents and my dad said to write an article about it, my mom immediately thinks it’s been tossed into the Charles or sold on the black market (that’s not a joke, she jumped to that immediately).

So, I posted an article and I got an email from a BU student saying that he was so sorry and was really intoxicated and saw my chair, thought it was abandoned and took it home for safekeeping. I don’t know if that’s true or not but he sounded absolutely heartbroken when I called him and asked him to bring it back to Warren.

It was in perfect condition and I’ve never held a grudge against him and I don’t bring it up when we run into each other on campus because it was a complete accident. It’s pretty fun to throw “that time I got wheelchair-jacked” into conversation with people who don’t know the story.

Have you ever been interviewed on campus before? 

I’ve had a couple people do it. This past year or so a couple of my friends in COM had entered a competition on NESN called “NESN Next”. They were supposed to make a short video about something about sports and the winner would get $20,000.

These three girls (Brittney Badduke, Kaley Roberts and Christina Beiene) made a documentary about me and it ended up winning the competition. They didn’t actually tell me that it won despite them knowing for two weeks ahead of time, so I found out watching the show. When they announced we’d won I actually leapt off my bed and started freaking out like I’d just won the World Series.

BU Today interviewed me when I was a freshman just to talk about my condition and just how I try to stay positive. Just because I keep getting broken doesn’t mean I’m going to stay down, I like to be living breathing proof that if you’re willing to work hard and not let things beat you, you can get back up from them.

Do you think your positive outlook could be applied to pretty much anything?

Absolutely. It could be as little as you’re trying to get through a midterm and as big as you’re trying to face off against a big medical thing. It’s not like I don’t have my struggles but I also don’t let it get to me. You have to give yourself a little time, and you have to be human, I mean things are gonna go wrong. Which is a big lesson I’ve had to learn because I’m stubborn and i like to be optimistic but I’m willing to accept that things aren’t going to go exactly to plan.

I’ve done poorly on tests and it’s ok, because then you just work twice as hard to make it up. It’s not the end of the world until it’s seriously the end of the world. I could care less about specific grades (which is probably a byproduct of me being in COM) as much as I’m learning and I’m trying hard. There have been classes where I’ve done poorly but I’ve retained the tenants of them so much so that I can use them and bring the up in my daily life. That’s what matters.

It’s all about living and learning and if you just stay positive with it, you take the hit and you move on and the next hit gets weaker. Plus, it’s more fun in general to be a happy person.

Anything you want to add? Fun facts, words of wisdom?
Hmm…I talk a lot. Writing on Unbreakable is a nice reminder that I’m able to live my passion because people are kind enough to allow me to share with them my crazy little fascinations in life. This sounds a little weird but I really tend to enjoy my life.

Things go wrong and BU’s still really hard for everyone but on the most part this place is really good to me. I haven’t been proven my dreams are not feasible yet, which I think is really interesting. I’ve met with people and I’ve talked about getting internships and they say they think it’s possible.

You work really, really hard in the hopes that one day the right people are going to come calling and when suddenly you realize you’re being told from the people who would tell you if you’re wrong that “you might just have something here”. That happened to me a couple weeks ago.

Just keep working hard, be polite, be kind, be positive and good things are gonna happen. Anyone who’s a good person deserves some good karma coming their way.